Language and culture: Critical components of multicultural teacher education

The Urban Review, VoL 28, No. 2, 1996

Language and Culture: Critical Components of Multicultural Teacher Education

Ellen Riojas Clark, Nancy Johnson Nystrom, and Bertha P(~rez

This article identifies components of a course on multiculturalism in teacher education. The course proposes four stages of awareness: ethnic identity exploration; development of knowledge in language and literacy acquisition; refinement of a repertoire for cultural ways of teaching and learning; and selection of a teaching style. A variety of readings and activities for teacher education are proposed.

Teacher educators who search for new approaches to multicultural education often note that the field is somewhat amorphous. They often echo Tyack's (1993) question: "What might be strategies that develop the necessary apprecia- tion of diversity while renegotiating what the participants in our kaleidoscopic culture have in common?" (p. 9). Since its resurgence in the 1970s, multicultural education has evolved as it has acknowledged and attempted to respond to new ethnic groups, and to gender and lifestyle issues. The increased popular media 's sound bites about the "culture wars" and the lack of a common multicultural curriculum at most universities (Jacoby, 1994) have given teacher educators conflicting messages about the relevance of multicultural education. Teacher educators are faced with two challenging tasks: to prepare teachers for cultural diversity and to instill in them the seriousness of the multicultural en- terprise. According to Banks (1991), the goal of multicultural education is "helping students to acquire the competencies and commitments to participate in effective civic action in order to create equitable national societies" (p. 28). Nieto (1992) defines multicultural education within a sociopolitical context:

Ellen Riojas Clark, Ph.D., is assistant professor, Division of Bicultural Bilingual Studies, Uni- versity of Texas at San Antonio. Nancy Johnson Nystrom, Ph.D., is a teacher with the Farmington (CT) Public Schools and a part-time lecturer, University of Texas at San Antonio. Bertha P6rez, Ed.D., is associate professor, Division of Education, University of Texas at San Antonio. Address correspondence to Dr. Ellen Riojas Clark, 930 Sunshine Drive East, San Antonio, TX 78228.

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0042-0972/96/0600-0185509.50/0 �9 1996 Human Sciences Press, Inc.

186 THE URBAN REVIEW

Multicultural education.., challenges and rejects racism and other forms of discrimi- nation in schools and society and accepts and affirms the pluralism (ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, economic, and gender, among others) that permeates the curriculum and instructional strategies used in schools, as well as the interactions among teachers, students and parents, and the very way that schools conceptualize the nature of teaching and learning. Because it uses critical pedagogy as its underlying philoso- phy and focuses on knowledge, reflection, and action (Praxis) as the basis for social change, multicultural education furthers the democratic principles of social justice. (p. 208)

Multicultural teacher education requires a view that is parochial enough to embrace the ethnic character of the local community yet is broad enough to prepare individuals for the ever-changing cultural diversity of society as a whole. Luis Rome argues that "the less people know about other cultures the less they are ready to compare advantages and shortcomings of their own culture" (as cited by Post, 1995, p. 213). Thus, a central component of multicultural teacher education is acknowledging one's own ethnic identity and becoming aware of one's attitudes toward different groups. Beyond this, certain linguistic and cultural knowledge is required to develop appropriate instructional strategies and to compensate for gaps in what have become traditional treatments of the multicultural field.

In this article, we model a process for renewing multicultural teacher education. First, we describe the changing demographics that make multicultural education a continuing, critical need, relying on data from California, Connecticut, and Texas. We then provide anecdotal evidence of the current status of teacher preparation with regard to attitudes toward minorities. In the second part of the article, we describe a prototype for the development of multicultural teacher- education programs responsive to the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse student populations.

THE INCREASING DIVERSITY

With the ever-increasing number of culturally and linguistically diverse students in U.S. public schools, the term minority has changed its meaning. Today, some 13 million students, or approximately 30% of the nation's school-aged population, are minorities (Alaskan, Native American, Latino, black, or Asian). As a result of immigration patterns and birthrates, those now known as minority groups will probably represent the majority in public schools by the 21st cen- tury. Minorities in Mississippi, New Mexico, and California now represent the majority of children of school age, and minorities in Texas are about to join them. California has 53% minority enrollment K-12, Texas 49%, and Connecti- cut 16% (Quality Education for Minorities Project [QEMP], 1990).

For too long, the perception has been that the need for knowledge about language diversity was confined to the East Coast, the West Coast, and the

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE 187

southwestern border regions, but the demographic and economic changes now occurring make this a pressing issue for all prospective teachers. Latinos are moving into the Midwest; Native Americans, with their diverse languages, con- tinue to move into the greater western regions; Vietnamese have settled in communities such as Dallas, Houston, and Milwaukee, where Asians have not tradi- tionally settled before; families of Hmongs and Koreans live in Georgia, Indiana, and New Jersey. States such as California and New York that have historically been the points of entry for new immigrants are now having to cope with unprecedented mixes of languages and cultures. These states are experienc- ing the impact of the continuously changing international political, social, and economic conditions as the makeup of communities changes almost overnight. In Glendale, California, for example, the linguistic minority population went within weeks from being primarily Latino to predominantly Soviet Armenian immigrants (Chang, 1990). Excerpts from Waggoner (1994, p. 5) give us the number of language minority students and the estimates of limited-English-proficient students for the states of California, Connecticut, and Texas as shown in Table 1.

The states with the lowest number of language minority students are Ver- mont, with an estimated 9,000; Wyoming, with an estimated 11,000; and Dela- ware, with an estimated 13,000 students limited in English proficiency (Wag- goner, 1994, p. 5). As these student populations grow in all geographic areas of the country, all teachers will need knowledge about working with linguistically diverse children in order to meet the social, emotional, and academic needs of all the children in their present and future classrooms: "The demographics make it clear that the country cannot discuss changes to its educational system with- out focusing on the needs and perspectives of our students" (QEMP, 1990, pp. 11-12). All teachers are teachers of minority students; minority students are becoming the majority.

TEACHER EDUCATION FOR INCREASING DIVERSITY

The changing face of the American schoolchild, however, is not mirrored by the teachers who will be teaching them. While the demographic projections for the year 2000 are that the minority student population will be over 50% in most urban school districts, the number of minority teachers is expected to fall from

TABLE 1. Estimated Language-Minority School-Age Population Aged 5-17

State Language Minority LEP Estimates

California 2,539,000 1,726,000 Connecticut 122,000 81,000 Texas 1,354,000 907,000

18B THE URBAN REVIEW

% of possible responses 100%

80%

80%

40%

20%

0% - Item 1 Item 2 Item 3

Blaoks

Hispanic

Asians

B Anglos

1 Value education highly 2 Emphasize education at home 3 Consider academic success an honor

FIG. 1. Values associated with school success.

the present 10% to a mere 5%. Enrollment figures for 1987 found fewer than 8% of the students in teacher preparation programs to be minority, and this figure is predicted to be cut in half over the next decade, based on the predicted failure rates on the teacher competency tests required for licensing in most states (QEMP, 1990, p. 41). Of the 700,000 teachers who will be trained in the next five years, only about 35% are predicted to be minority (p. 42). These statistics amplify the need for all teachers to be trained in knowledge and strategies which will permit them to communicate and interact interculturaUy.

The great diversity of students and the increasing homogeneity of teachers underscore the need for multicultural teacher preparation. In his study of teacher perceptions, Rashid (1990) suggested that, while teachers generally saw a need for multicultural education, this need often went unmet. And unfor- tunately, stereotypes persist even among seasoned educators. Surveys conducted in 1992-1993 of 80 students in the course "Multicultural Groups in the United States" required of future administrators and supervisors showed (see Figures 1-3) that graduate students had surprisingly low opinions of certain ethnic groups (Clark, 1993).

PROTOTYPE FOR MULTICULTURAL TEACHER EDUCATION

Teacher education was quick to respond to the changes in school populations in the 1960s and 1970s by requiring coursework in multicultural education for pre- and in-service teachers. An example is California's 3.3 Multicultural Pro- gram of the early 1970s (California Assembly Office of Research, 1974). Yet


% of possible response8

100% i 80%

:::I i f Item 7 Item 8 Item 9

7 Are highly creative 8 Are highly analytical 9 Excel in skills requiring dexterity

FIG. 2. Values associated with school failure.

% of passible response8 1:::[

t ii!!ii! Item 4 Item 8 Item 6

4 Consider learning bookish 5 Do only the minimum required of them 8 ,Seek reinforoement for completed tasks

FIG. 3. Characteristics attributed to groups.

Blsqk8

Hispanic

Asisn8

I I I l l Anglos

Blaok8

Hispanio

Asians

n Anglos

the content of the coursework has varied over the years according to the inter- ests and background of the instructor, the local school needs, and so on. Teachers often take survey courses in multicultural studies to meet the require- ment. While "multicultural" courses may be found in a variety of departments (e.g., history and literature) in universities, the nature of those courses often


inspires fiery debate (D'Souza, 1991; Gray, 1991), and not all of them are appropriate for teacher education. For teacher educators, the selection of multicultural course content and methods benefits from a history of research in the linguistic and cultural phenomena of the multicultural classroom. It is this knowledge base which meets the immediate and long-term needs of teachers.

A notion shared by most multicultural educators is that the point of depar- ture for understanding others is one's awareness of oneself. Our prototype for preparing teachers begins with becoming aware of one's own ethnic and cultural identity or how one's identity may be an amalgam of different ethnic heritages. It is based on Padilla's (1980) "paradigm of ethnic identity development." Padilla's premise is that a well-defined ethnic identity influences self- confidence, which then heightens interest and increases motivation, having a positive impact on academic achievement. Translating this paradigm into teacher education, we begin with the teachers' ethnic-cultural self-analysis, reflection on their own socialization toward schooling, and a determination of the target ethnic groups in the teacher's community. In the second stage, the teacher en- gages in a study of knowledge pertinent to multicultural education and initiates linguistic study of the target ethnic group's home language. In the third stage, the teacher is challenged to examine the culture of the teaching and learning community, and the fourth stage involves the selection of strategies for intercultural teaching. (See Figure 4.)

Stage 1: Ethnic and Cultural Identity Development

Numerous sociopsychological scales exist for determining one's own ethnic identity and assessing one's attitudes toward members of other groups. Re- search such as that by Banks and Banks (1989) and Nieto (1992) is useful for framing discussions of ethnic identity. Professionals at all levels can benefit from some ethnic self-analysis, which may be done as an anonymous, out-of- class self-survey of racial or ethnic attitudes. For class discussion, videos such as the Frontline presentation, "The Color of Your Skin" (PBS, 1991) show the difficulty with which we all face issues of class and color, In this film, one sees an extremely confrontational approach to race relations in a school run by the U.S. Army. Popular feature-length films and literature also deal openly with attitudes toward minorities and may be used successfully to stimulate discussion. The tenor of the discussions should be analytical, not didactic. The objec- tive of these exercises is that students arrive at an understanding of their own ethnic attitudes and be able to articulate personal definitions of equal opportunity and racism.

Students may then pursue an understanding of themselves as socialized learners. What about their upbringing has influenced their approach to school? In addition to their own stories, the exploration of diverse stories, such as those


5-rAGE I STAGE II

ETHNIC IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT OF KNOWLEDGE OEVELOPMENT BASES IN INTERCULTURAL

TEACHER :EDUCATION

STAGE Ill STAGE IV

DEVELOPMENT OF REPERTOIRE SELECTION PROCESS OF OF CULTURAL WA~OF TEACHING STRATEGIES FOR TEACH, I~6"- AND LEARNING

FIG. 4. Prototype for multicultural teacher education.

compiled by Dyson and Genishi (1994), assist students in seeing the cultural patterns in society and in schooling. Reflective journals or essays allow a thoughtful exploration of one's own cultural repertoire. On a political level, students can also analyze the history and current status of affirmative action legislation and other legal and social issues related to minorities.

Stage 2: Development of Knowledge in Language and Literacy Acquisition

Framing our discussion of information or content in teacher preparation courses is Cummins's (1990) template for educational programs wishing to empower minority students. This framework centers theoretically on the tenet that "students from 'dominated' societal groups are 'empowered' or 'disabled' as a direct result of their interactions with educators in the schools" (9. 21). He further theorized that a major influence on minority student performance is the


extent to which the culture and language of minority students are validated, respected, and incorporated into the curriculum. Cummins cited considerable research linking academic success to the degree of cultural and linguistic inte- gration. He characterized the incorporation of minority students' language and culture "along an additive-subtractive dimension": Those educators who see their role as adding a second language and cultural affiliation to their students' repertoires are likely to empower students more than those who see their role as replacing or subtracting students' primary language and culture. Accompanying the notion that incorporating minority students' language and culture empowers them is the corollary argument that empowered students will perform better academically. Extrapolating from this, teacher education can prepare teachers in the principles of language and literacy acquisition, as well as in strategies for using cultural inquiry to guide instruction. Likewise, teachers who are trained to "collaborate" with the students' cultural community, who teach "interactively" and "experientially," and whose assessment is "advocacy-oriented" will empower, rather than disable, minority students (Cummins, 1990).

Oral Language Acquisition

Under the umbrella of multicultural education are some core tenets usually relegated to teacher preparation in language-related fields. Yet, as demographics indicate, all teachers will increasingly encounter varieties of English language use as well as students from different language backgrounds. Language minority students may in some cases be enrolled in English as a second-language (ESL) class but may be mainstreamed for the remainder of the school day, increasing the likelihood that "regular" teachers will be faced with a need of knowledge about their circumstances. The principles of oral language acquisition are usually included in coursework for preservice teachers in early child- hood, elementary, and special education, while only foreign language and ESL teachers receive second-language-acquisition principles. Experience and demographics demonstrate, however, that all teachers can benefit from knowledge of these processes.

Topics for inclusion in the language acquisition component of multicultural teacher preparation may be found in numerous linguistics and language texts. But a text by Lindfors (1987) does an admirable job. Lindfors covers first- and second-language-acquisition principles and processes, their relationship to cog- nitive development, and language variation. Prospective teachers benefit from the real language conversations presented and analyzed in the context of teaching and learning. Activities allow the luxury of thoughtfully analyzing classroom language, a skill which should be part of teacher preparation, for the demands of the novice teacher's instructional task are too great to routinely permit it (Nystrom, 1983).


Teachers further benefit from practice in avoiding the urge to classify speakers of different varieties of English and non-English speakers as "defi- cient"--linguistically or intellectually. In Cummins's (1990) view, teachers must first approach the student with the intent to add to the individual's linguistic repertoire, not to subtract from it. Second, they need be aware of the func- tions of language: the use of a dialect to promote in-group solidarity (Barth, 1969), for example, or the different patterns of logic which may be manifested in foreign students' written discourse (Kaplan, 1989). Third, they need to be given practical pedagogical tools which give opportunity for practice, avoid decontextualized drill and practice, and promote language use in meaningful, interactive, content-based communication. Finally, given the limitations of language assessment for instructional application, they will need to know how to analyze a students' language by observation in order to design instructional situations that will facilitate the acquisition of language as a means toward mastery of content.

Biliteracy

As we have seen, many children come to school with a culture that is very different form the school culture, but many also bring a language system which is different. The languages and language systems are sometimes within the same family of languages as English (sharing a Latin base and Roman alpha- bet), but as we have seen, more and more children come with different language systems (e.g., Arabic, Chinese, Hmong, and Hindi) and are posing unique dilemmas for teachers and schools. Prospective teachers need to develop ways of describing nonjudgmentally (e.g., alternatives to "They write back- ward"), assessing (e.g., communicative competence, literacy, and use of language for problem solving), and utilizing the language that children bring to school. These ways of describing, assessing, and utilizing the home language must value, extend, and capitalize on the child's and the community's ways of communicating and learning.

Teaching for biliteracy affords culturally and linguistically diverse students the opportunity to develop literacy skills in more than one language. Biliteracy is the acquisition and learning of the decoding and encoding of print by using two linguistic and cultural systems in order to convey messages in a variety of contexts (P6rez & Torres-Guzm~n, 1996). This encoding and decoding of print is rule-governed not only by the language but also by the cultural systems that govern interpreting and interacting with print. Embedded in print materials are elements of the culture which produced them. Teacher education candidates, when confronted with Chinese or Arabic printed matter, can examine all their hypotheses about the rules governing literacy tasks.

An activity developed by Teberosky and P6rez (1991) asks students to exam-


ine, evaluate, make hypotheses about, and attempt to decode a variety of print written in different language systems (e.g., Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and other Asian and European languages). A protocol asks the student to describe what they have before them, to assess the uses and genre of the print material, to hypothesize about the information or content of the materials, and to attempt to decode the material. The activity ends with a discussion of the ethnocentric messages that teachers convey to linguistically diverse students about their language, writing system, culture, and learning tasks related to biliteracy. Through simulations and exercises that not only provide knowledge of minority languages and cultures but also provoke examinations of attitudes and belief systems, teacher candidates may understand the need for the acceptance of cultural and linguistic diversity and the inclusion of multiple instructional strategies in the classroom.

Stage 3: Developing a Repertoire of Cultural Ways of Teaching and Learning

Among the goals for multicultural teacher education is the development of teachers' cultural repertoires, allowing them to acknowledge and incorporate the child's cultural ways of knowing (Heath, 1983). Developing a cultural repertoire refers to understanding the rules of participation in different contexts (e.g., schools vs. festivals) and understanding the different cultural rules underlying people's interaction, communication, and learning. In addition to knowing the rules, developing a cultural repertoire refers to the ability of an individual to participate in "cultural practices of more than one group, in more than one language, while maintaining, negotiating, and creating his or her identity at multiple levels" (P6rez & Torres-Guzm~in, 1996, p. 16). A major task of teacher education programs ought to be to assist teacher candidates in the expansion of their cultural repertoires so that they, in turn, are able to assist their culturally and linguistically diverse students in affirming, defining, and integrating their cultural duality.

One way that teachers can increase their cultural flexibility is by developing powers of anthropological observation, data collection, and analysis. Ac- ceptable as tools in educational research (Johnson and Gardner, 1980), participant observation, interviewing, and ethnography are extremely useful to teachers who need to explore the cultural norms, values, and attitudes of the students before initiating an instructional program. Anthropological methods can be introduced through cultural sensitivity exercises used in cross-cultural education.

The teacher-anthropologist methods assumes the development of skills in "distancing oneself from the familiar." Teachers fulfill the role of participant


observer in the classroom; therefore, teacher candidates need practice in observation and ethnographic description. Anthropological fieldwork was found by Clark and Milk (1983) to have the greatest impact on teachers' professional development. It particularly reflected positive changes in attitudes toward language and cultural issues. (See Heath, 1982, 1983, for a discussion of anthropological fieldwork that has enabled teachers to alter classroom language use while improving minority children's academic performance,) Teachers who have spent countless hours in classrooms have been desensitized to the school environment and need to practice viewing each class of students as a new cultural or social unit. They need to develop the skill of unbiased reporting of events, using language which is devoid of subjective or ethnocentric terminol- ogy. Finally, they need to learn to watch and observe the students' and families' manifestations of cultural and language norms in order to plan instructional activities in which students can successfully engage.

Stage 4: Matching Teaching and Learning

When a teacher interacts with a classroom of students, she or he chooses from a repertoire of teaching strategies. Often, teachers begin from a precon- ceived notion of what are the appropriate teaching strategies for a given topic and a given group of students. Yet, every effective learning situation between student and teacher requires reciprocal action and interaction. Selecting appropriate instructional strategies begins with the discovery of the reference points from which both the teacher and the child start. As teachers learn about the students' linguistic and cultural environment, they must also examine the rules governing the school culture. The teacher needs to analyze the school's cultural worldview, the meanings behind words and interactions, and the potentially conflicting conceptions of teaching and of schooling. Erickson's (1987) definition of cross-cultural refers to learned and shared standards of ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. It follows, then, that teaching is a cross-cultural communication, since by definition the teacher has learned ways of thinking and acting which have not yet been learned by the students (p. 1).

S U M M A R Y

We have described a prototype for multicultural education that consists of four stages: development of ethnic and cultural identity, linguistic knowledge, intercultural teaching repertoires, and the matching of teaching and learning. The model allows teachers to be educated in content and strategies which will help them to communicate and act interculturally. Teachers need to use the students' language, experiences, and cultural background as part of the curricu-


lum and as a vehicle for it. Multicultural education that includes linguistic and anthropological approaches will better prepare teachers to work with the cultural diversity that students increasingly bring to the classroom.

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Language and culture: Critical components of multicultural teacher education