A work in progress on past and present learning theories

          Behaviorism is one of the theories that have remained popular since its inception. This theory came out of the notion that humans were biologically continuous with the animal Kingdom (Phillips & Soltis, 2004, p.21). The focus in behaviorism isn’t how new knowledge is acquired but how new behaviors are acquired. Simply put, behaviors are learned through conditioning. Learners are conditioned by an outside stimulus that causes a reflex action that is innate in individuals. The role of the student is biologically built in as a passive reactionist where the teacher finds a stimulus or reward that can be used to produce a conditioned response.

          After Thorndike there was B.F. Skinner who expanded on the work on both Pavlov and Thorndike. All in all, there are many similarities between these behaviorists: they postulate that a single mechanism, conditioning, is responsible for producing learning, and furthermore, this mechanism operates throughout the entire animal kingdom (Phillips & Soltis, 2004, p. 29). Though there are relatively obvious problems with these theories, they do have some validity to them in that students can be encouraged to participate in behavior seen as becoming as a result of specific stimuli; in other words, motivation and interest can be generated.

          Social Learning is another strand of learning theories that encompass many theorists. Pioneers like Lev Vygotsky, John Dewey, and Albert Bandura have popularized this theory into one of the major influences on modern education. Generalizing these theorists, there are four major themes that they espouse as that which makes learning possible: social interactions is the most obvious, followed by activity being done by the learner (learner not passive in learning), another is memorization and practice with others that is tied to language, and finally the idea that there is some problem to be solved by the individual or group. These ideas interrelate at some point and all feed off of one another.

          The teacher and the student have separate but similar roles. The teacher is to engage the learner and facilitate learning in an environment that is relevant to the learner, stretching the previous knowledge of the learner with new knowledge; in fact, the teacher is an active agent orchestrating circumstances of motivation and relevance. The student on the other hand is also active in her/ his learning process but in another way. The student is interacting with other students on a similar path, some more and some less advanced. The student may be modeling or mimicking behavior or problem solving a meaningful situation, either way they would be in a social setting and relating to their environment.

          The theoretical usefulness for educators with this theory is that the problem solver is in a place to learn about his or her action and its consequences (whether good or bad). The fact that the content of their learning is couched in a context that is relevant to them affords them the opportunity to notice how helpful or not helpful his or her actions are. Pointless or non relevant problems don’t always lend themselves to being helpful in meaningful contexts. Learning from others is also highly beneficial because of the nature of commerce and economy. It is paramount that all U.S. citizens be pliable enough to work with well people, including learning from them. As an educator, I believe that is something that we should aim at encouraging.

          As an educator in an educational system that consistently continues to have trouble providing an equitable education to the same groups of students, I see myself among other things as a liberator. Though I desire to see all students excel and be pushed to their full potential, I am especially sensitive to those groups of students who have consistently made up the bottom of the achievement gap since the achievement gap has been measured many decades ago. What I mean by being sensitive to the groups of students who have made up the bottom is that my focus in my “free” time is to go in depth to find the reasons why this gap exists and explore how to avoid this happening in my classroom. This may entail my treating students different according to their strengths and weaknesses, or as a result of their personal culture, but it doesn’t entail my having low-expectations and goals for any student, regardless of their ethnic or racial background. My motivation and desire is that my classroom be equitable—that all students reach their potential. 

  

In addition to the aforementioned theories, the theories that most represent my personal pedagogy are critical pedagogy and culturally relevant pedagogy. These are extremely similar except critical pedagogy focuses on individual empowerment and culturally relevant pedagogy focuses on group or “collective” empowerment (Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Wink, 2005). At the heart of each of these theories is the notion of being equipped with the tools that it takes to be successful in a given system while simultaneously being empowered to change that system. Students taught with this premise should leave school with the ability to grow in understanding and respect for their culture and those of others. As Gloria Ladson-Billings in The Skin That We Speak asserts:

           “Rather than experiencing the alienating effects of education where school-based learning detaches students from their home culture [culturally relevant pedagogy]…is a way for students to be bicultural and facile in the ability to move between school and home cultures…it is designed to help students ask larger socio-political questions about…ongoing inequity and social injustice. If students do not begin to ask these questions, they are likely to reiterate positions that suggest that the reason people are unsuccessful in school is that they do not try hard enough. Culturally relevant teaching is designed to help students move past a blaming the victim mentality and search for the structural and symbolic foundations of inequity and injustice”. (Delpit & Dowdy, 2002, p.111)

From the inception of tracking student achievement the same groups have pulled up the rear; consequently, the same groups have consistently been out front. During this same period there has been an abundance of school reforms, none of which has substantially changed the achievement of poor children and the achievement of students of color. What critical pedagogy and culturally relevant pedagogy affirm is that these students are alienated in our current school systems, having to leave their culture and thus a part of them at the school door upon arrival. This isn’t working.

The blame the victim notion that points to behavior, home circumstances, IQ, cultural deficiency, genetics and the sort, has brought about plenty of reform that has done little more than divert attention from the real issues. The forced assimilation that schools postulate onto students assuages citizens, even at times those who are being oppressed, to believe that the problem is in individuals instead of systems and structures that privilege middle and upper-class whites (Gay, 2000). The notion of success that schools typically espouse does not include Mexican, African, Native, or some Asian American cultural traits or languages. This leaves students with the difficult task of deciding to divorce their culture and attain “success” or embrace their culture and struggle emotionally and academically.

Specifically, culturally relevant pedagogy rests upon three criteria:

 (1) Students must experience academic success

(2) Students must develop and/or maintain cultural competence

(3) Students must develop a critical consciousness through which they challenge the status quo of the current social order (Ladson-Billings, 1995)

          Instead of simply building off of that which is “normal” to middle-class students, culturally relevant pedagogy incorporates that which is culturally pertinent to “other” students as well. Simply stated, this is good teaching. Building on meaningful previous student knowledge is at the heart of the most recent research on student engagement. In another thought provoking article, Gloria Ladson-Billings (1992), speaking of culturally relevant teachers, clarifies this notion by stating:

           “…they come to participate in a reciprocal relationship with students in which they use their professional knowledge and skills to help students academically, socially, and culturally. In turn, the students can use their cultural and community knowledge to help their teachers more fully integrate into the students’ worlds. The teacher…comes to believe that she or he can learn from students as well as teach them”. (Ladson-Billings, 1992)

Culturally relevant pedagogy purports the ideal situation; as Nel Noddings says, educating the whole child (Noddings, 2005). Critical pedagogy also endorses this notion of the learning process between teachers and students being reciprocal and fluid (Wink, 2005). The painstaking question yet remains to be, why aren’t education programs implementing true culturally competent or culturally relevant teaching? Might it be that education administrators and many teacher educators are not laden with this knowledge and experience of cultural competence themselves? After all, one cannot teach what one does not know.

In light of these two theories, it seems to be a sham to relegate diversity and multicultural education to a course, workshop, or module that students must complete for certification (Cross, 2004). Can one truly become culturally competent through an “observation” or a “course” on diversity? Who are we kidding? Furthermore, what type of assessment is being done to assure that teachers leave this hoop-jumping with any substantive competence? Are education administrators and teacher educators teaching teachers with no assessment? If a k-12 teacher taught a course or unit without any assessment, formative or summative, they would be labeled neglectful at best or more likely incompetent. If this is the state of education leadership, is there any wonder why the achievement gap still persists? Teacher education programs and education reform need to incorporate meaningful relationships for future teachers with students other than those of their personal culture; in addition, future teachers need to foster relationships with teachers of diverse populations who have been noticed as exemplary. The observation model that is presently in place in most teacher preparation programs is sorely inadequate. As Martin Haberman eloquently states: “completing a traditional program of teacher education as preparation for working in today’s urban classroom is like preparing to swim the English Channel by doing laps in the university pool” (Haberman, 1995).

          As an educator, how might I apply the lofty goals and aspirations of critical pedagogy and culturally relevant pedagogy? My first challenge as an educator having become proficient in my content knowledge is to change the context of the content that I plan to teach. Ideally, the context of the content that one teaches should represent the culture of one’s students. For instance, if I am teaching a math class where the students are predominately African American, much of the content, particularly projects and word problems, will be couched in African American culture. The other personal cultures of the students in the class will also be recognized and education will be inserted into their cultures. This isn’t to say that students won’t learn dominant cultural traits and nuances as well; in fact, it is vital that all students learn dominant discourses so as to be prepared to function in a society that by and large functions on the principles of the dominant culture (Wink, 2005). The difference being that dominant culture will be viewed as an addition rather than students’ home culture being left out or seen as deficient which is typical of traditional classrooms (Cross, 2004).

          Lastly, the notion of high academic achievement will be a staple of my classroom. When students see school as a place of inclusion and cultivation instead of exclusion and deprivation, teachers can make substantial progress in their students’ academic achievement. Many of the issues that keep students from being successful academically (e.g. behavior, delinquency, disengagement, lack of confidence, being pushed out) begin to go away as students see school as a place that is adding to who they are instead of subtracting from who they are or trying to change them in some undesirable way. Having high expectations for all students is a major piece of attaining high academic achievement, but in order to truly have high expectations teachers must be culturally competent. Much of the misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and stereotypes that teachers have for low achieving students are purely cultural. Critical pedagogy and culturally relevant pedagogy quell this issue along with a plethora of others that students of color and low income students face on a daily basis in traditional classrooms.

Bibliography

Cross, B. (2004). New racism, reformed teacher education, and the same ole’ oppression. Educational Studies , 263-274.

Delpit, L., & Dowdy, J. K. (2002). The skin that we speak: Thoughts on language and culture in the classroom. New York: The New Press.

Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. New York: Teachers College Press.

Haberman, M.  (1995). Star teachers of children in poverty. West Lafayette, IN: Kappa Delta Pi

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But that’s just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory into Practice, Vol. 34, No. 3 , 159-165.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1992). Liberatory consequences of literacy: A case of culturally relevant instruction for african american students. The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 61, No. 3 , 378-391.

Noddings, N. (2005). What does it mean to educate the whole child? Educational Leadership , 8-13.

Phillips, D. C. & Soltis, J.F. (2004). Perspectives on learning, 4th Ed. New York: Teachers College Press.

Wink, J. (2005). Critical pedagogy: Notes from the real world, 3rd Ed. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A work in progress on culture and learning…

 

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Defining the Role of Culture in Classroom Learning

“The context is the one which results when the culture of the students—all the students—interacts with the teacher’s culture…it is neither assimilation nor acculturation but accommodation…a common ground is created”. O.D. Harris

          How has your cultural background affected your educational experience? Has the effect been for your benefit, your detriment, or both? Students educated in America regardless of their ethnic or cultural backgrounds have been subject to learning through the lens of dominant cultural traditions[1] and theories of learning (Delpit, 1995, 2002; Hilliard, 1978; Lewis, 1978; Nasaw, 1979). Though there have been exceptions, the majority of students from non-dominant backgrounds have consistently been unsuccessful in keeping pace with their dominant culture peers (National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1999). For the past few decades, researchers have been struggling to determine how culture affects learning. This is due in part because of the constant increase of students from diverse backgrounds in American classrooms[2]. This essay defines the role culture plays in the process of learning. Students’ culture reflected in curricula facilitates learning by doing three general things: Building confidence, building on previous knowledge, and creating harmony between the culture of the school and the culture(s) of its students.

          Before defining the role that culture plays in the process of learning, we shall determine and define what we mean by culture. This is necessary because of the ambiguity surrounding its definition. Malloy[3] (1997) states that “culture is the shared meaning—but not necessarily consensus—the taken for granted values and beliefs that are seen in what people do, what they know, and the tools they use”. Also included in the definition of culture is a shared or similar experience and shared interpretations of those experiences so that there is a commonality of thought and practice. Therefore, everyone has culture and culture is inherent in every curriculum world-wide regardless of whether it was put there intentionally or not.

          When students’ cultures are reflected in curricula, culture facilitates the process of learning by building confidence. There is an immediate connection when a student experiences their culture in the classroom (Ernst-Slavit & Slavit, 2007; Pransky, 2003). Students who have this identification are given the opportunity to feel as though the curriculum relates to them on a personal level. Many students at this point see this connection as reinforcement that the subject at hand is applicable to them (Anderson, 1990). For instance, African-American students who were taught mathematics curriculum that included facts and language[4] that represented their culture in a positive light were seen to have “felt good about going to math class” and saw math as “something they can do” (Malloy, 1998). This was a complete switch from their previous attitudes where they were quoted as “hating math” (Malloy, 1998). If curriculum doesn’t highlight the students being taught, the students may deduce “that only other people invent mathematics” (Barta & Schelling, 1998) or any other subject for that matter. Reflection of ones culture in curricula builds confidence which enhances the opportunity for learning; to put it another way, culture facilitates the learning process by building a students’ sense of confidence in specific subject areas. This is opposed to traditional American curriculums which are often culturally biased (Delpit, 2002; Freire, 1970; Gutstein, 2006; Hilliard, 1978).

          Here’s a great example from Malloy (1997) of a culturally biased test question (part of a traditional curriculum) that didn’t build confidence: “It costs $1.50 each way to ride the bus between home and work. A weekly bus pass is $16. Which is the better deal, paying the daily fare or buying the weekly pass?” From their previous cultural experience, many students of color saw buying the weekly pass as the better deal but the teacher marked them all wrong. Students of color saw that in some families three or four people may use a bus pass during different times of the day or on weekends or that one person may happen to have more than one job. The test designer assumed that only one person would be using the bus pass, they had only one job, and they had weekends off. Differences of culture pose obstacles that many students fail to overcome (Gutstein & Peterson, 2006). Why do students have to overcome these obstacles? What’s really being measured here? Teachers need to understand the role of culture in order to assess students’ conceptual understanding versus their level of assimilation. Curriculum architects who think or claim they are equitable need to aid in the process to meet students where they are.

          Students’ culture reflected in curricula also facilitates the learning process by building on previous knowledge. Students learn and grow by building on the knowledge they have acquired from the past. For example, Michael Jordan didn’t all in one day realize that he was a great basketball player; rather, he practiced and learned how to play the game and grew by building on the knowledge that he’d previously acquired. Great politicians, writers, doctors, educators and so on, evolve into being polished at their discipline through toiling and building on previous knowledge. Students who have a personal connection[5] (their culture) to their classroom curriculum are thus provided with the building blocks to grow in whatever field they’re studying (Moses, 2001; Steinberg, 2005; Sternberg, 1998). Reflected culture facilitates the learning process by building confidence, but it also produces something that’s static, a platform or launching pad to expand into whatever one may want to become.

          Students who lack a cultural connection to school curriculum are then subject to seeing school as boring, non-engaging, not for them, pointless, and non-rewarding (Anderson, 1990; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Malloy, 1997; Wheelock, 1992). This sense of meaninglessness leads to the perpetuation of the achievement gaps that persist in the educational system on all levels. Incorporating students’ culture in the classroom isn’t a panacea for all educational inequalities or the achievement gaps, but it is a means of achieving equity and will quell much of the disproportionate representation of students of color as underachievers.  Culturally responsive curricula are predicated on the teacher’s interpreting, understanding, and recognizing the students’ culture and integrating it into the learning process (Malloy, 1997). Many students from diverse backgrounds are often times disinterested in school because their culture is seldom, if ever, displayed in a positive manner (Anderson, 1990).

          Another positive benefit of students’ culture facilitating the learning process by building on previous knowledge is that it lends itself to different learning styles. Culture doesn’t produce learning styles (Hilliard, 1978). If cultures produced learning styles we would find that entire groups, such as European-Americans, all have the same learning style, such as kinesthetic[6]. Clearly not all European-Americans are kinesthetic learners. However, incorporating various cultures does enhance the opportunity for different learning styles to thrive. Case in point, though it isn’t uniform, in Native American culture, people traditionally learn through a variety of oratory narration (Lambe, 2003). Including their culture in curricula would not only do them a fair service, it would also assist the learners who have that style preference from other cultures.

         The popular myth has been that students of color are either lazy or unable to cognitively keep up with their white peers (Freire, 1970; Moses, 2001; Schwartz, 1981). The fact stands that European-American students are at an advantage in that the curriculum is typically written for and by people who are from their culture (Anderson, 1990; Delpit, 1995, 2002; Hilliard, 1978; Ernst-Slavit & Slavit, 2007). Students of color are expected to make an assimilation[7] or acculturation[8] adjustment upon arriving at school which necessitates leaving their culture at the door. Up to this point, schools and teachers have made few efforts to meet these students where they are in order to accommodate a harmonious cultural relationship (Delpit, 1995; Hilliard, 1978). This leads to the last example of how students’ culture reflected in school curricula facilitates learning.

          Infusing all students’ culture in their curriculum facilitates the learning process by creating harmony between the culture of the school and the culture(s) of its students. Students should not have the full burden of assimilating or acculturating. The students and the school should meet half way. Not only does this meeting show the students that their heritage is respected by the school, it also encourages the student to feel at ease and participate in the friendly environment that they’ve been shown. Most, if not all of the students that comprise the American educational system, come from cultures that have contributed to many of the subjects that Americans study (Barta & Schelling, 1998). Why aren’t these contributions ingrained in curriculums throughout the U.S.? This isn’t a reference to a month or week of studying customs and it isn’t a reference to a few boxed paragraphs at the end of a chapter of a text-book. This is a reference to substantial contributions like the Babylonians who actually were using the “Pythagorean Theorem” years before Pythagoras was born but never received their due credit (Anderson, 1990).

          In conclusion, having culture in classrooms is nothing new—there has always been culture in classrooms; however, the question is who’s culture is in American classrooms, who’s culture isn’t, and why? An ending thought from Gisela Ernst-Slavit:

“The incorporation of language and culture into teaching is a complex process, requiring among other things, a self-examination of pedagogical beliefs, a desire to utilize students’ backgrounds in instructional planning and process, and insight into a variety of knowledge sets and dispositions related to specific aspects of language and culture”. (Ernst-Slavit & Slavit, 2007)

No special pedagogy needs to be developed for students of color. Culture exists in the classroom and curriculum but it is selective and exclusive—curriculum needs to be designed to include all students’ culture. Teachers of all students need to be culturally responsive teachers who contextualize teaching by giving attention to the immediate needs and cultural experiences of their students. We’ve demonstrated the role that culture plays in the learning process as the facilitator. Students’ culture reflected in the classroom facilitates learning by building confidence, building on previous knowledge, and making the culture of the school and that of its students’ harmonious. The unfair, unequal, educational experience students of color receive can only be rectified when the role that culture plays in the process of learning is realized and amalgamated into classrooms.

Bibliography

Anderson, B. (1990). Minorities and Mathematics: The new frontier and a challenge of the nineties. The Journal of Negro Education , 260-271.

Barta, J., & Schelling, D. (1998). Games We Play: Connecting mathematics and culture in the classroom. Teaching Children Mathematics , 388-393.

Chunn, E. W. (1990). Sorting Black Students for Failure: The Inequity of Ability Grouping and Tracking. The Journal of Educational Research , 94-106.

Delpit, L. (1995). Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. New York: The New Press.

Delpit, L., & Dowdy, J. K. (2002). The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts On Language and Culture in the Classroom. New York: The New Press.

Ernst-Slavit, G., & Slavit, D. (Summer 2007). Educational Reform, Mathematics, & Diverse Learners: Meeting the Needs of All Students. Multicultural Education , 20-27.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.

Gutstein, E., & Peterson, B. (2006). Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers. Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools.

Hilliard III, A. G. (1978, Summer). Equal Educational Opportunity and Quality Education. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 2, New Perspectives on Black Education , 110-126.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But That’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. Theory into Practice, Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 159-165.

Lambe, J. (2003). Indigenous Education, Mainstream Education, and Native Studies. American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 27, Nos., 1 & 2, pp. 308-326.

Malloy, C. E. (1997). Including African-Americans in the Mathematics Community. Yearbook (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) , pp. 23-33.

Malloy, C. E. (1998). Issues of Culture in Mathematics Teaching and Learning. The Urban Review , pp. 245-257.

Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2000). Intercultural Communication in Contexts 2nd Edition. Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Company.

Moses, R., & Cobb Jr., C. (2001). radical equations. Boston: Beacon Press.

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). (1999). Trends in Academic Achievement Among Student Subgroups. National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Pransky, K. (December 2002/January 2003). To meet your students where they are, first you have to find them: Working with culturally and linguistically diverse at-risk students. The Reading Teacher , 370-383.

Schwartz, F. (1981, Summer). Supporting or Subverting Learning: Peer Group Patterns in Four Tracked Schools. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol.12, No.2. , pp. 99-121.

Steinberg, L. (2005). Adolescence. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Sternberg, R. J. (1998). Ability Testing, Instruction, and Assessment of Achievement: Breaking Out of the Vicious Circle. New Haven: The Office of Educational Research and Improvement.

Wheelock, A. (1992). Crossing The Tracks: How Untracking Can Save Americas Schools. New York: W. W. Norton.

 

 

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[1] Dominant Culture: Whereas traditional societies can be characterized by a high consistency of cultural traits and customs, modern societies are often a conglomeration of different, often competing, cultures and subcultures. In such a situation of diversity, a dominant culture is one that is able, through economic or political power, to impose its values, language, and ways of behaving on a subordinate culture or cultures. This may be achieved through legal or political suppression of other sets of values and patterns of behavior, or by monopolizing the media communication. A few American dominant cultural traditions are: democracy, heterosexism, racism, “standard” English, capitalism, white privilege, individualism, classism, and patriarchy.

[2] In 2005 the percentage of non-white students in the U.S was 38%; it’s predicted in the year 2020 the number will increase to 44%; and by the year 2050 non-white students are expected to exceed 54% (C.f. footnote 2).

[3] Carol E. Malloy, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the School of Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is also a Board of Directors member of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). She was a member of the NCTM Standards 2000 writing team. She taught mathematics for 20 years in public schools across the U.S.

[4] Additional examples can be seen in Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers; they include exercises Historical, Cultural, and Social Implications of Mathematics, “Home Buying While Brown or Black”, Sweatshop Accounting, and Chicanos Have Math in Their Blood.

[5] Ken Pransky (ESL elementary school teacher), in the article, To meet your students where they are, first you have to find them: Working with culturally and linguistically diverse at-risk students, found for his Cambodian and Latino ESL students that incorporating students home culture into the classroom curriculum boosted their confidence, participation, and test scores dramatically. Also see Robert Moses’ the Algebra Project in the book, Radical Equations. Moses documents his success with African-American students after reframing mathematics around the culture that these students are familiar with. Moses has been so successful that the Federal Government has funded his project to be implemented in over 15 cities across the U.S.

[6] Kinesthetic learning occurs through doing, touching, and interacting. Other popular learning styles are visual and auditory.

[7] Assimilation is a type of cultural adaptation in which an individual gives up his or her cultural heritage and adopts the dominant cultural identity.

[8] Acculturation is the cultural modification of an individual or group by adapting to or borrowing traits from another culture; a merging of cultures as a result of prolonged contact. Acculturation typically happens as minority groups adopt habits and language patterns of a dominant group.

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