Teaching StudentsWhose Race, Class, Culture or Language Differs from Your Own

Chapter 6

Achievement Gap

Achievement Gap is the disparity in learning between African American or Latino students and white middle-class students, usually reported based on results of standardized test.

The achievement gap can be narrowed by: Classroom structure Teacher expectations School culture and climate

Teachers and schools can have a profound positive effect on the achievement of racial and ethnic minority and low-income students.

Demographics

What changing demographics in the United States means for teachers: Language differences Varied economic experiences Cultural differences

Teachers Must: Bridge the gap Overcome personal bias Create a supportive classroom environment Respect all students Become familiar with cultural backgrounds

Cultural Misunderstandings

Cultural misunderstandings between teachers and students result in: Conflicts Distrust Hostility School failure

Diversity: Asset or Deficit

Deficit Model: Assuming inaccurately that students from low-

income families or racial and ethnic minority families lack substantial useful knowledge or resources upon which to build and support a student’s education.

Inaccurate assumptions about low-income families: Knowledge does not match academic goals. Families have different values about education.

Knowing Your Students Helps You Teach

When teachers’ backgrounds differ from their students the teacher should: set high expectations for these students be proactive in learning about their

cultures, backgrounds and families.

Resource: Funds of Knowledge

*Funds of Knowledge* is knowledge students and families possess from their own cultural and community experiences that enables them to operate successfully in their own cultures and communities, but often mismatched with knowledge required to be successful in school, and is often devalued.

Characterizations

Make a character map, create a character bulletin board, or describe the following students based on your first, instinctual reactions: a teenager from a family that has strong and vocal Democratic

Party ties; a teenager from a family that has strong and vocal Republican

Party ties; a significantly overweight teenage girl; a primary school student from an affluent family who is an only

child; a middle school student whose two older siblings you had in

class several years ago--each of whom was often a troublemaker;

an Asian boy who is the son of a respected university math professor;

a teenage boy who is thin, almost frail, and very uncoordinated for his age.

Devaluing Students in School: How Does It Happen?

Whether students experience schools as valued or devalued depends on: Teachers Administrators Other Professionals Staff Communication

Self-fulfilling prophecy is a teacher’s expectation about a student which may come true whether or not there is evidence to support that expectation. In what ways do you think your expectations of the

students on the previous slide would influence your teaching?

Not Listening to or acknowledging students

Not encouraging particular students

Failure is inevitable for some students

Not allowing enough time to think during discussions

Systematically disadvantaging particular groups

Identifying and correcting misbehavior more frequently

Calling on students less frequently

Correcting behavior more harshly

Giving lower grades for comparable work

Engaging less in informal talk

Establishing relationships with parents from own racial / ethnic group

Greeting some students with a smile and others without

How Teachers Communicate through Their Expectations

Rosenthal and Jacobson

1968 Classroom Study They told teachers that Harvard researchers had

developed a new IQ text that could predict which students were about to bloom intellectually.

After testing, they reported to the teachers which students were “bloomers”. These “bloomers” were really chosen at random. There was no IQ test that could predict which students

were on the verge of an intellectual spurt. Eight months later, students were tested, and

those who had been assigned as “bloomers” outperformed the other students.

Eliza Doolittle and Howard Gardner

What links Eliza Doolittle, the fictional character from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion (which was the basis of the movie My Fair Lady) and Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner together? According to Linda and Bruce

Campbell’s book Multiple Intelligences and Student Achievement, it is the Pygmalion Effect (or self-fulfilling prophecy).

Eliza Doolittle

In the play, Eliza emphatically states, “You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on) the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.”

What is MI? For Howard Gardner,

intelligence is:

the ability to create an effective product or offer a service that is valued in a culture;

a set of skills that make it possible for a person to solve problems in life;

the potential for finding or creating solutions for problems, which involves gathering new knowledge.

Multiple Intelligences

Linguistic Intelligence: the capacity to use language to express what's on your mind and to understand other people. Any kind of writer, orator, speaker, lawyer, or other person for whom language is an important stock in trade has great linguistic intelligence.

Logical/Mathematical Intelligence: the capacity to understand the underlying principles of some kind of causal system, the way a scientist or a logician does; or to manipulate numbers, quantities, and operations, the way a mathematician does.

Musical Rhythmic Intelligence: the capacity to think in music; to be able to hear patterns, recognize them, and perhaps manipulate them. People who have strong musical intelligence don't just remember music easily, they can't get it out of their minds, it's so omnipresent.

Multiple Intelligences Bodily/Kinesthetic Intelligence: the capacity to use your whole body

or parts of your body (your hands, your fingers, your arms) to solve a problem, make something, or put on some kind of production. The most evident examples are people in athletics or the performing arts, particularly dancing or acting.

Spatial Intelligence: the ability to represent the spatial world internally in your mind -- the way a sailor or airplane pilot navigates the large spatial world, or the way a chess player or sculptor represents a more circumscribed spatial world. Spatial intelligence can be used in the arts or in the sciences.

Naturalist Intelligence: the ability to discriminate among living things (plants, animals) and sensitivity to other features of the natural world (clouds, rock configurations). This ability was clearly of value in our evolutionary past as hunters, gatherers, and farmers; it continues to be central in such roles as botanist or chef.

Multiple Intelligences

Intrapersonal Intelligence: having an understanding of yourself; knowing who you are, what you can do, what you want to do, how you react to things, which things to avoid, and which things to gravitate toward. We are drawn to people who have a good understanding of themselves. They tend to know what they can and can't do, and to know where to go if they need help.

Interpersonal Intelligence: the ability to understand other people. It's an ability we all need, but is especially important for teachers, clinicians, salespersons, or politicians -- anybody who deals with other people.

Existential Intelligence: the ability and proclivity to pose (and ponder) questions about life, death, and ultimate realities.

What do you think?

What do you think of multiple intelligences? Does MI promote each individuals strengths or does it waste

precious classroom time needed for core subjects and traditional practices?

Do you think MI can really help to solve the Pygmalion Effect as predicted in Campbell’s book?

What do you think are some dangers of using a MI curriculum? Would you use MI in your classroom?

If so, how often? If not, why not?

What do you think of the five minds of the future? (Next slide) Are these five minds really any different than traditional values? Which do you think is most important?

Why? Does the level of importance change with the situation?

How will you develop these five minds in your classroom?

Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future

Separate from MI, these specific cognitive abilitieswill be sought and cultivated by leaders in the years ahead. They include:

The Disciplinary Mind: the mastery of major schools of thought, including science, mathematics, and history, and of at least one professional craft.

The Ethical Mind: fulfillment of one's responsibilities as a worker and as a citizen.

The Creating Mind: the capacity to uncover and clarify new problems, questions and phenomena.

The Respectful Mind: awareness of and appreciation for differences among human beings and human groups.

The Synthesizing Mind: the ability to integrate ideas from different disciplines or spheres into a coherent whole and tocommunicate that integration to others.