NCCRESt

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Social Bias

• "More than I Bargained For": Confronting Biases in Teacher Preparation
  This paper presents the cases of four preservice teachers enrolled in a critical multicultural education course during Spring 2000, showing how the readings, cross-racial dialogues, and journal reflections that were part of the course helped students, for the first time and irrespective of race and gender, discuss their experiences and question personal views on race, class, gender, and sexuality.
• A Path to Social Change: Examining Students' Responsibility, Opportunity, and Emotion toward Social Justice
  Investigated college students' beliefs about privileged and oppressed adults' responsibility for the onset/offset of social inequities, emotions linked with their responsibility, and behaviors that should result from responsibility for social equity. Overall, preconceived notions of privilege and oppression can offer an explanation for students' resistance to multicultural discourse.
• Accent Discrimination: Implications for the Multicultural Educational Institution of the 21st Century
  Based on litigation patterns, discrimination because of accent occurs most frequently in colleges and universities, particularly in the classroom. Accent discrimination cases are unlike other employment discrimination cases because successful claims generally do not depend on qualifications, but on accent's effect on job performance.
• Assessing the Impact of a Prejudice Prevention Project
  Reports on the effectiveness of a prejudice prevention intervention that was used among a culturally diverse group of students in Hawaii. Results indicate that teachers observed significant improvement in the students' cooperative social skills as a result of participating in the multicultural guidance activities.
• Beyond the Boundaries of Tradition: Cultural Treasures in a High School Theatre Arts Program
  Argues that canonical plays must be critically engaged rather than "handed down," with students discovering much about themselves and each other through their own engagement. Describes how a high-school acting class examined the dramatic work of Latino/a playwrights for their in-class scene work, and used student experiences to create their own scenes about experiences with prejudice.
• Censoring by Omission: Has the United States Progressed in Promoting Diversity through Children's Books?
  Examines the promotion of cultural diversity in the United States through childrens books. Discusses the scarcity of multicultural literature for children, ethnic folklore, racial bias in older books for children, new stereotypes in children's literature, political correctness, and ways to enhance access to quality multicultural literature.
• Class of 2000: The Prejudice Puzzle[SM]. A Teachers' Guide. A Presentation of National Public Radio[R] Specials Project
  This teachers' guide accompanies a series of reports from National Public Radio's "Class of 2000: The Prejudice Puzzle," which was broadcast on September 9-15, 1990. The series explores the impact of prejudice on the lives of young people through several interviews from a diverse student population.
• Developing a Rationale for Multicultural Education in Rural Appalachia
  Because of their ethnic/racial homogeneity, Appalachian schools often see multicultural education as irrelevant. Teacher education must link the oppression of Appalachia with that of more visible minority groups; show how knowledge is subjective; and emphasize that true national unity results from honoring diversity.
• Developing Teaching for Tolerance Programs in Central and Eastern Europe
  Polish society, characterized by closed attitudes toward religious minorities, is poorly prepared for contact with other cultures; yet postcommunist Poland is becoming increasingly heterogeneous. Intercultural education infused throughout the curriculum would help children learn tolerance.
• Dewey, Freire, and a Pedagogy for the Oppressor
  Asserts that cultural diversity and democracy will always be in conflict with each other, examining oppression in a democratic society; an oppressor's view of the world; a pervasive dualism in perspectives; the inadequacy of current efforts to overcome the conflict between the oppressors and the oppressed; traits of oppressors that must be changed; a three-pronged approach to consciousness raising; common themes within this approach; and underlying assumptions. (SM).
• Dramatized Experience, Civil Discourse, Sensitive Issues
  Describes the author's experience when the director and teacher-trainers of a writing program persuaded him that the oral interpretation he wished them to perform was too troubling and explosive to use. Outlines his questions and anguish about the incident, and the urgency of dealing with the dilemmas of multiculturalism, racial intolerance, and the teaching of writing.
• Educational Reform, Students of Color, and Potential Outcomes
  Based on middle-class, white values and assumptions, school restructuring proposed in "first wave reform" will increase inequity and stratification and hamper social mobility for minorities. School choice, outcomes-based education, and secondary track systems are critiqued.
• Educational Reform, Students of Color, and Potential Outcomes
  Based on middle-class, white values and assumptions, school restructuring proposed in "first wave reform" will increase inequity and stratification and hamper social mobility for minorities. School choice, outcomes-based education, and secondary track systems are critiqued.
• Encouraging Students To Analyze/Articulate Their Beliefs about Cultural Diversity
  This paper offers suggestions for teaching high school and college students about cultural diversity and for providing them with multicultural educational experiences. After presenting a background and rationale for such teaching, the paper gives a list of classroom activities, including student reactions to statements regarding racism and affirmative action and a video analysis exercise.
• Ethics in Qualitative Research: Multicultural Feminist Activist Research
  It explores a self-reflexive effort to engage teachers, administrators, and community leaders in qualitative inquiry within a multicultural feminist framework. In graduate courses emphasizing feminist pedagogy and research in urban settings, students conducted research projects designed to transform existing social inequities in their lived experiences.
• Finding a Voice for the Victimized
  Examines writers' growing awareness of the voices if the victims, exploring the representation of characters who resist subjugating colonial powers and tracing how various past and present authors have represented colonized peoples. By refocusing postmodern readers' consciousness on the violation of rights, authors reeducate and sensitize them to the contrasting voices that speak out against the persecution of those who are different.
• Finding a Voice for the Victimized
  Examines writers' growing awareness of the voices if the victims, exploring the representation of characters who resist subjugating colonial powers and tracing how various past and present authors have represented colonized peoples. By refocusing postmodern readers' consciousness on the violation of rights, authors reeducate and sensitize them to the contrasting voices that speak out against the persecution of those who are different.
• Getting from the Outside In: Teaching Mexican Americans When You Are an "Anglo."
  A midwestern university provides cross-cultural student teaching experiences in a southwestern city with a large Mexican-American population. Features include two classroom placements, a course in multicultural education, and bicultural mentors.
• Including Appalachian Stereotypes in Multicultural Education: An Analysis of Bill Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods."
  Analyzes stereotypes of the South and Appalachia in a recent nonfiction bestseller, demonstrating that prejudice against southerners and Appalachians is so entrenched that it goes unquestioned. Discusses how such stereotypical books can be used in multicultural education classes in Appalachian colleges.
• Including Gypsy Travellers in Education
  Examined the educational exclusion and inclusion of Gypsy Traveller students, exploring how some Scottish schools responded to Traveller student culture and how this led to exclusion. Interviews with school staff, Traveller students, and parents indicated that continuing prejudice and harassment promoted inappropriate school placement and persecution.
• Moving from an Obsolete Lingo to a Vocabulary of Respect
  In the postcolonial era, vocabulary must be developed that communicates a belief in equality through word choices that promote respect. Citizens of the global community have the right to name themselves, define their histories, and live according to their cultures.
• Multiculturalism as Jagged Walking
  Argues that teacher educators must find ways to move beyond student teacher resistance to multiculturalism so that future teachers are prepared to understand and teach diverse students, proposing a model that examines the multidimensionalities of place and memory as they shape multicultural identities, discussing social bias in education in the American south, and examining memory as ambiguity, complexity and history. (SM).
• Pro-Claiming a Space: The Poetry of Sandra Cisneros and Judith Ortiz Cofer
  Examines three principles of the poetry of two Latinas, Sandra Cisneros and Judith Ortiz Cofer: the expression of dual language heritage, the highlighting of women's issues as a means of self-affirmation, and the importance of creating time and space for writing.
• Promising Practices
  Examines selected programs and methodologies in multicultural education designed to foster greater understanding of diverse cultures and lessen racial, class, and gender biases. Highlighted programs include a doctoral program in multicultural education and a staff development program for dealing with workplace diversity.
• Redirecting Our Voyage through History: A Content Analysis of Social Studies Textbooks
  Examines the extent to which social studies textbooks include diverse perspectives on U.S. history through a content analysis of the treatment of slavery in 17 5th-grade texts in Connecticut.
• Reflecting, Reconceptualizing, and Revising: The Evolution of a Portfolio Assignment in a Multicultural Teacher Education Course
  Describes the use of portfolios in teacher education programs and the development and evolution of a portfolio assignment in a course on multicultural issues in special education. Qualitative data that describe students' (n=156) learning is presented, and implications for future practice and research is provided.
• Resources for Multicultural Awareness and Social Action
  Contends that many teachers do not educate elementary age students about prejudice because they lack access to appropriate resources. Provides teachers with an annotated list of curriculum, journals, and organizations they may use to help young students make connections between institutionalized prejudice, intercultural competency, and their own power to produce change.
• Service Learning for a Diverse Society: Research on Children, Youth, and Prejudice
  Reviews psychological and educational research on prejudice and intergroup relations to produce suggestions and guidelines for improving the combined educational goals of service learning and multicultural education. Recommends starting early, emphasizing critical thinking, connecting activities to appropriate stages of cognitive development, and employing role playing and cooperative learning.
• Teaching about Diversity Issues
  Describes a course designed to help preservice teachers get in touch with their own attitudes and beliefs during an assignment that involves individuals from different backgrounds. Students' and teachers' perspectives on this learning experience are presented, focusing on such issues as religion, culture, social class, race, and teenage mothers.
• The Identity Development of Multiracial Youth. ERIC/CUE Digest, Number 137
  In the past several decades, individuals have been responding more actively to political and personal pressures to identify with a specific group that shares their background. For many people of mixed racial, ethnic, and cultural heritage, making such an identification is complicated.
• The International Baccalaureate: International Education and Cultural Preservation
  Examines how well the International Baccalaureate (IB) achieves its aims of inculcating international attitudes while maintaining students' cultural identities. Finds that international attitudes may be more affected by the social environment of IB programs than by the curriculum; success at cultural maintenance varies by culture, with Western cultures being better supported.
• The Outcomes of Teaching Tolerance: A Research Report Submitted to the Graduate Social Science Education Program
  This study attempted to record possible changes in individual students involved in a "teaching tolerance" program. Approximately 70 high school students enrolled in a "Participation in Government" class were analyzed qualitatively to determine whether individuals experience a change in attitudes toward those different from themselves.
• Those People: You Know Who They Are
  Describes the ways in which a group of graduate students in a theory of multilingual education class learned to identify groups they had been taught to regard as "those people," others to be distrusted or disliked. Dialogue about who represented "those people" for each student led to considerations of race, class, gender, and religion.
• Turning Sunshine into Noir and Fantasy into Reality: Los Angeles in the Classroom
  At the University of Delaware, an interdisciplinary college course called "LA.: City of the Angels" incorporated history, political theory, film studies, and literature. The course aimed to deepen student awareness of diversity by deconstructing Hollywood images of Los Angeles and examining the interconnections between regional stereotypes and cultural and racial prejudice.
• Unpacking Adventure
  Anecdotes are used to illustrate how White, male, European values are embedded in adventure education. Traditional European assumptions about risk, challenge, and individual accomplishment may not be relevant to other cultures, women, or disadvantaged people.
• White Americans' Attitudes Toward Asian Americans in Social Situations: An Empirical Examination of Potential Stereotypes, Bias, and Prejudice
  Investigates the stereotypical attitudes of college students toward a variety of social situations involving Asian Americans. Examines the effects of differential labeling of Asian Americans regarding the attitudes held toward them.