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Culturally Relevant Education

• Teaching Asian American Students
  Uses data from interviews with parents of Asian American students, observations, and literature reviews to identify cultural and language issues that must be considered in teaching this population. The paper discusses the history of Asian immigrants, attitudes toward education among Asians, the relationship between teaching styles and Asian culture, and suggestions for teachers working with Asian American students.
• Saris & Skirts: Gender Equity and Multiculturalism
  Staff members working in early childhood services have enormous potential to influence young children's developing attitudes toward cultural diversity and gender equity. This issue of the Australian Early Childhood Association Research in Practice Series focuses on how early childhood staff can work productively through the challenges of achieving gender equity in a culturally and ethnically diverse country such as Australia.
• Holidays in the Public School Kindergarten: An Avenue for Emerging Religious and Spiritual Literacy
  Addresses holidays in the curriculum and concerns raised for educators about how to be inclusive and recognize students' different cultures. Presents a sample approach to exploring holidays in the classroom, including techniques for brainstorming, celebration activities, children's individual experiences, expanding experiences, engaging families, choosing resources, and parties.
• Culturally Responsive Teaching for American Indian Learners
  Teachers in a multicultural society need to respect cultural differences, know the cultural resources their students bring to class, and be skilled at tapping into learners' cultural resources in the teaching-learning process. They must believe that all students are capable of learning, and they must implement an enriched curriculum for all students.
• Children, Culture and Education
  Today, the majority of countries are characterized by multicultural diversity, a factor which has enormous implications for early childhood educators. As we begin to understand the long-term benefits of participation in high quality early childhood care and education, educators must also recognize that their own cultural heritage can and does influence their perspectives on what is considered the best interests of young children.
• Sharing Our Pathways: A Newsletter of the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative, 2001
  This document contains the five issues of "Sharing Our Pathways" published in 2001. This newsletter of the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative (AKRSI) documents efforts to make Alaska rural education--particularly science education--more culturally relevant to Alaska Native students.
• But That's Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
  Describes the centrality of culturally relevant pedagogy to academic success for minority students who are poorly served in public schools, discussing linkages between school and culture, examining the theoretical grounding of culturally relevant teaching in the context of a study of successful teachers of black students. Provides examples of culturally relevant teaching practices.
• Teachers' Responses to Policy Implementation: Interactions of New Accountability Policies and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in Urban School Reform
  This paper explores how new accountability policies interact with culturally relevant teaching at the classroom level. When teachers are under the constraints of accountability and student testing policies, are they able to adopt and practice culturally relevant pedagogy in their classrooms? Previous research indicates that high-stakes accountability systems connected with standardized testing are viewed as having negative effects on teachers, the teaching profession, and curriculum and instruction.
• Latino Voices in Children's Literature: Instructional Approaches for Developing Cultural Understanding in the Classroom. Chapter 15
  As Mexican Americans are the largest language-minority population in U.S. public schools, an investigation of literature that authentically reflects Mexican American students' cultural experience is necessary for any teacher.
• Waking the Sleeping Giant: Engaging and Capitalizing on the Sociocultural Strengths of the Latino Community
  A family literacy program for Salvadoran refugees and other Latinos in Arlington (Virginia) is analyzed from a sociocultural perspective as exemplifying an educational project designed and implemented by grassroots organizations in an increasingly diverse, multicultural/multilingual community. The program addresses the educational needs of poor illiterate families while drawing on parents' culture and extensive life experiences.
• Saris & Skirts: Gender Equity and Multiculturalism
  The booklet discusses about enormous potential the staff members working in early childhood services have to influence young children's developing attitudes toward cultural diversity and gender equity.
• Applying Banks' Typology of Ethnic Identity Development and Curriculum Goals to Story Content, Classroom Discussion, and the Ecology of Classroom and Community: Phase One. Instructional Resource No. 24
  This instructional resource describes ways in which J. A.
• Andragogy in Color
  Malcolm Knowles' theory of andragogy asserts that adult learners learn differently from younger learners and hence require a different kind of education. According to Knowles, andragogy is characterized by the following hallmarks: adult learners are self-directed, have accumulated vast experiences that add to their knowledge, are at a stage in life where they are ready to learn, engage in problem-centered learning, and are internally motivated.
• Next Steps: Research and Practice To Advance Indian Education
  Written entirely by Native authors, this book addresses some critical issues in the education of American Indian and Alaska Native students. Intended for college classrooms, it aims to fill a void in the literature and textbooks used in multicultural and teacher education programs.
• Exploring Indigenous Pedagogies: Why Is This Knowledge Important to Today's Educators?
  Recent educational literature reveals a growing interest in understanding the educational needs of learners from other cultures and a growing awareness that instructional methods to help learners from nonwhite cultures should be anchored to indigenous ethnographic research. Western educators must holistically and comparatively understand not only indigenous cultural psychologies, but also how other cultures view the self.
• A Mountain Cultural Curriculum: Telling Our Story
  Studies the development and implementation of a six-week curriculum to expose denigrating Appalachian Mountain stereotypes and supplant them with images that children create after investigating their West Virginia mountain cultural history of oppression and rebellion. Bases the development of the curriculum on multiple conceptions of multicultural education.
• Teaching through Traditions: Incorporating Languages and Culture into Curricula
  This chapter discusses challenges to the perpetuation of American Indian languages and cultures, as well as successful strategies and practices for developing culturally relevant curriculum. A review of the history of U.S.
• Teaching Reading to American Indian/Alaska Native Students. ERIC Digest
  This digest summarizes ways to help young American Indian and Alaska Native children become fluent readers. There are numerous reading intervention programs, each with its own set of claims and counter-claims.
• Where in the Oregon Trail Is Carmen Sandiego? A Commentary on Software and Its Sensitivity to Diversity
  Addresses cultural biases, language biases, cultural sensitivity, and the authenticity of educational software for children, critiquing several popular educational programs and revealing the pitfalls of software design and the problem among software engineers (lack of training and lack of cultural knowledge). Proposes tips to help parents and educators choose culturally relevant, appropriate educational software packages for their children.
• Educational Technology and the Diverse Classroom
  Describes how thoughtful, creative technology use in the classroom can encourage development in diverse students, explaining that the key to effective computer use within culturally diverse classrooms remains with the teacher. The paper discusses how to understand diversity and reach out to all students; describes how technology can enhance minority students' learning; and explains cultural responsiveness in using technology.
• Educating Culturally Responsive Teachers: A Coherent Approach. SUNY Series, Teacher Preparation and Development
  This book examines what is needed to accomplish the task of staffing U.S. schools with culturally responsive teachers, discussing the specific elements of teacher education programs needed for the country's diverse public schools.
• Pinunuuchi Po'og'ani: Southern Ute Indian Academy
  Describes the Pinunuuchi Po'og'ani, the Southern Ute Indian Academy, providing Montessori education for Southern Ute tribal members ages 6 weeks through 10 years and reviving the use of the Southern Ute language and culture among young students and their families. Describes how the program supports families, students, and staff, and incorporates Montessori-style materials covering Ute language, history, culture, arts, timelines, and traditional games.
• "Making Democracy Real": Teacher Union and Community Activism To Promote Diversity in the New York City Public Schools, 1935-1950
  Examines how an interracial coalition of radical teachers from the Teachers Union of New York City and community activists from Harlem promoted black history and intercultural curriculum and collaborated with parents for school reform during the 1930s-40s. Their efforts to develop more culturally responsive schools were derailed in the late 1940s by the red-baiting of progressive scholars and teacher union activists during the cold war.
• Developing Culturally Consonant Curriculum Using the Technology of the New Millennium
  This paper explains how educational technology and multimedia materials can enhance teaching and learning for today's diverse students. The United States still carries the Puritan influence in education (attempting to build a single culture), with little recognition of the need to address diversity in California's K-12 classrooms.
• We Are Still Here: Learning about Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
  Describes a year-long study of the indigenous peoples of the Americas conducted by an intern at a Montessori school, focusing on the Pueblo people and emphasizing contemporary indigenous people. Highlights introducing the study to students, creating materials that capture the essence of a Montessori lesson, structuring lessons through an examination of fundamental needs of indigenous nations/tribes, and reading books about contemporary indigenous children.
• Cooking Up a Learning Community with Corn, Beans, and Rice
  Describes using cooking as a vehicle for creating community among three culturally diverse classrooms of prekindergartners and third graders. Notes how the choice of corn, beans, and rice in the cooking exercise planted the roots of understanding, tolerance, and compassion, and an appreciation of diversity.
• Biliteracy for a Global Society: An Idea Book on Dual Language Education
  This document asserts that dual language education is a program that has the potential to promote the multilingual and multicultural competencies necessary for the new global business job market while eradicating the significant achievement gap between language majority and language minority students.
• Equity Pedagogy: An Essential Component of Multicultural Education
  Equity pedagogy involves teaching strategies and environments that help diverse students attain necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes for functioning effectively within a just, democratic society. The article examines how equity pedagogy interacts with other dimensions of multicultural education (content integration, knowledge construction process, prejudice reduction, and social structure).
• Dealing with Disengagement through Diversity: An Electronic Curriculum for Cultural Relevance
  Examines specific features of the online Blackboard distance learning platform that enhance the advantages of alternative teacher certification programs, especially with regard to helping teachers develop a culturally relevant pedagogy.
• Enhancing Success in American Indian Students: Participatory Research at Akwesasne as Part of the Development of a Culturally Relevant Curriculum
  Participatory research by the State University of New York at Potsdam and the Mohawk Nation involved community discussion groups, which established needs for bicultural education for Indian students, the use of Mohawk culture as the arena for curriculum development, development of Mohawk cultural standards, and teacher training in Mohawk culture. (Contains 39 references.) (TD).
• Effects of a Hmong Intern on Hmong Students
  A program on Hmong culture, language, and history was implemented in a diverse, urban, public elementary school. Observations of two Hmong students while in the Hmong program and in their regular classroom were compared.
• Literacy Instruction for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students: A Collection of Articles and Commentaries
  Addressing issues arising from increasing student diversity, this book brings together articles from "The Reading Teacher," "Journal of Reading," and "Language Arts" which offer teaching strategies, ways to capitalize on differences, and ways to use multicultural literature.
• Reading and the Native American Learner. Research Report
  Intended as a resource for mainstream teachers, this document summarizes current research on effective ways for teachers to meet the educational needs of American Indian students in public schools. The first section discusses the history of U.S.
• Breaking the Cultural Cycle: Reframing Pedagogy and Literacy in a Community Context as Intervention Measures for Aboriginal Alienation
  This paper presents an alternative view to the pedagogical needs relating to literacy for Aboriginal students. The question posed is how to utilize this knowledge to lessen the impact of perceived failure in early schooling of entrenched non-attendance patterns for Aboriginal students of compulsory school attending ages.
• Telling Their Side of the Story: African-American Students' Perceptions of Culturally Relevant Teaching
  Examined African American elementary school students' interpretations of culturally relevant teachers within urban contexts. Student responses indicated that culturally relevant teaching strategies had a positive effect on student effort and engagement in class content.
• In Search of Wholeness: African American Teachers and Their Culturally Specific Classroom Practices
  This collection of essays is a theoretical and practice-oriented treatment of how culture and race influence African American teachers. After an introduction, "The Common Experience" (Jacqueline Jordan Irvine), there are eight chapters in two parts.
• Multicultural Education in the U.S.: A Guide to Policies and Programs in the 50 States
  This book compiles information to investigate the presence and structure of multicultural education programs throughout the United States. The book begins by discussing the need for multicultural education programs, and the goal of which is to provide more accurate descriptions of America's microcultural populations and to guarantee a better education for all American school children, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or language background.
• Multicultural Education: Issues, Policies, and Practices. Research in Multicultural Education and International Perspectives, Volume 1
  This book presents recent research findings on different aspects of multicultural education, informing teachers of the issues, policies, and new approaches prevalent around the world.
• Education in Micronesia: A Multicultural Perspective
  Traditional education in Micronesia has been informal and experiential, with a communal orientation. Certain knowledge is secret, and much folklore and mythology is sacred.
• Creating Highly Motivating Classrooms for All Students: A Schoolwide Approach to Powerful Teaching with Diverse Learners. The Jossey-Bass Education Series
  This book focuses on teaching diverse students, providing a pedagogical framework and concrete strategies that school staff and educators can use in the context of: professional development related to school renewal; professional development related to K-12 teaching; and teaching strategies for K-12 classrooms.
• Culturally Responsive Educational Web Sites
  Discusses the shortcomings of multicultural education; presents Vygotsky's sociocognitive theory as a model for multicultural education for the World Wide Web; and discusses the process of Web design as an appropriate technological tool to apply Vygotsky's theory to create culturally responsive educational environments. (Contains 9 references.) (Author/LRW).
• It's about People: A Successful School/University Partnership
  Utah State University and a rural elementary school attended by Navajos cooperated on a science education program for grades 4-6. The program used take-home science kits; field trips; parental input; and Navajo staff, language, and culture to make the program culturally relevant.
• Hispanic Education in the United States: Raices y Alas. Critical Issues of Contemporary American Education
  This book portrays what works in creating better educational opportunities and effective school reform for Hispanic Americans, offering a reflection on the bicultural experience of minority groups in U.S. schools and showing how and why educational reforms must seek to build upon rather than downplay the native culture and language of minority students.
• Sharing Our Pathways: A Newsletter of the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative, 2001
  This document contains the five issues of "Sharing Our Pathways" published in 2001.
• Successful Early Childhood Education in an Imperfect World: Lessons Learned from Four Northwest Schools. Program Report
  This report describes four innovative and culturally responsive early childhood education programs in Montana, Washington, Alaska, and Oregon. The introduction discusses developmentally appropriate early education and effective teaching practices.
• Cultural Diversity in Catholic Schools: Challenges and Opportunities for Catholic Educators
  This book examines sociocultural factors that affect teaching and learning in today's Catholic elementary and secondary schools. The first chapter, "Cultural Diversity: An Important but Problematic Issue," discusses how demographic and societal changes have created a greater need for cultural diversity in education, and stresses the ambiguities inherent in addressing this diversity.
• The Magic of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: In Search of the Genie's Lamp in Multicultural Education
  In recent years, there has been growing interest in helping teachers develop culturally responsive teaching strategies. This paper profiles crucial aspects of a culturally responsive pedagogy and proposes a holistic framework for integrating different levels of culture into culturally responsive teaching.
• Being Responsive to Cultural Differences: How Teachers Learn
  This book offers suggestions for teacher educators to encourage preservice teachers to construct and expand their own skills and techniques for culturally responsive teaching. The book's 3 parts offer 12 chapters.
• Creating Highly Motivating Classrooms for All Students: A Schoolwide Approach to Powerful Teaching with Diverse Learners. The Jossey-Bass Education Series
  This book focuses on teaching diverse students, providing a pedagogical framework and concrete strategies that school staff and educators can use in the context of: professional development related to school renewal; professional development related to K-12 teaching; and teaching strategies for K-12 classrooms. The book also describes how school-based teams can be prepared to serve as staff developers, school renewal facilitators, and instructional leaders.
• In Search of Wholeness: African American Teachers and Their Culturally Specific Classroom Practices
  This collection of essays is a theoretical and practice-oriented treatment of how culture and race influence African American teachers.
• Teaching Diverse Students: Preparing with Cases. Fastback 429
  The use of short cases (or case scenarios) and a case method of instruction can help teachers and other educators in both preservice and inservice contexts learn ways of implementing curriculum and providing effective instruction for diverse students. This "Fastback" from the Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation illustrates such use of the case method.
• From Remedial to Gifted: Effects of Culturally Centered Pedagogy
  Describes a culturally relevant Spanish program in a high school that helped native speakers avoid failure due to culturally inappropriate teaching. The class maintained Latino students' native language and increased language fluency by developing thinking, oral, and written Spanish skills.
• A Comparison of Multicultural Characters in the Annotations of Two Recommended High School Reading Lists Published Thirty-One Years Apart
  This content analysis sought to examine the annotations in two editions of "Books for You" (a recommended reading list for high school students) published thirty-one years apart (1964 and 1995) to determine if the roles, settings, and importance of multicultural characters has changed in any way.
• Incorporating Student Voice into Teaching Practice. ERIC Digest
  In some classrooms, student voices are barely heard while teachers monopolize classroom talk, and knowledge is treated as residing entirely with the teacher. This Digest explores different ways in which student voices can be heard in the classroom.
• Cultural Complexity That Affects Young Children's Contemporary Growth, Change, and Learning
  Based on the view that the group orientation to multicultural education reinforces group stereotyping and seldom allows acknowledgement of diverse children's unique capabilities and differences or helps children build self-identity while learning to appreciate others, this paper presents and discusses contemporary cultures of young children's lives relative to a notion of "lived" early childhood curriculum that is developmentally and culturally conscious.
• Developing Culturally Consonant Curriculum Using the Technology of the New Millennium
  This paper explains how educational technology and multimedia materials can enhance teaching and learning for today's diverse students. The United States still carries the Puritan influence in education (attempting to build a single culture), with little recognition of the need to address diversity in California's K-12 classrooms.
• School Counselors, Teachers, and the Culturally Compatible Classroom: Partnerships in Multicultural Education
  School counselors need to advise their teaching colleagues on incorporating diversity within classrooms. Includes various ways counselors can advise and introduce strategies to teachers that will avoid inappropriate pedagogical habits regarding ethnicity, class, gender, and disabling challenges.
• Successful Early Childhood Education in an Imperfect World: Lessons Learned from Four Northwest Schools. Program Report
  This report describes four innovative and culturally responsive early childhood education programs in Montana, Washington, Alaska, and Oregon. The introduction discusses developmentally appropriate early education and effective teaching practices.
• Promoting Reading among Mexican American Children. ERIC Digest
  Good books can help children develop pride in their ethnic identity, knowledge about cultural history and positive role models, and improved self-esteem. However, Mexican American students often do not experience literature in this way.
• Let's Add R.I.C.E. (Relevant, Intercultural, Childhood Experiences) to Our Curriculum Menu!
  In the United States and other countries experiencing large influxes of immigrants, how to acknowledge and address the increased diversity has been a challenge for early childhood education. This article explores the use of children's literature in this process, and includes a brief description and evaluation of five culturally diverse children's books.
• Counselors, Students of Color, and College: Student-Centered and Systemic Multicultural Interventions
  Student demographics on campuses increasingly reflect diversity. A counselor's ability to help this emerging campus population requires the use of multicultural interventions that affect the student and the system.
• Integrating the Arts through a Multicultural Theme into the Second Grade Curriculum
  This report describes a program for advancing the appreciation, acceptance, and understanding of diverse cultures. The targeted population consists of students in a self-contained second-grade classroom in a large urban industrial city located in the Midwest.
• Then the Beauty Emerges: A Longitudinal Case Study of Culturally Relevant Teaching
  Explores the classroom curriculum and instructional strategies of a white, second career teacher who created a culturally relevant teaching practice. Longitudinal data chronicled the development of her beliefs, values, and dispositions for meeting diverse student needs.
• Classroom and Curriculum Accommodations for Native American Students
  This article explores culture-specific approaches to enhance the classroom and curriculum of Native American students and to improve their academic performance, social understanding, and acceptance by peers. It considers educational goals for these students, characteristics of Native American learners, and teaching strategies.