The 21st Century Teacher: A Cultural Perspective

Journal of Teacher Education63(4) 245 –253© 2012 American Association of Colleges for Teacher EducationReprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/0022487112446511http://jte.sagepub.com

Over the last several decades, teacher education’s central challenge has been to prepare teachers for the rising het-erogeneity and the changing demographics of U.S. class-rooms. Demographic changes have highlighted the need to focus on cultural and linguistic issues in classrooms across the country. A common response to this challenge has been the compartmentalization of university-based teacher educa-tion programs into different specializations, which are typi-cally organized around various student characteristics such as language background, presumed learning ability, ethnic background, and so on. Thus, rather than talking about “edu-cation” in teacher education, we tend to talk about “regu-lar education,” “bilingual education,” “special education,” “multicultural education,” and so on.

The overarching intent in this article is to consider the relationship between multiple diversities from the perspec-tive of preparing teachers to serve English Learners (ELs). In particular, we focus on the issue of culture and the role it has traditionally played in teacher preparation. Although ELs are typically thought of narrowly in terms of language differ-ences alone, we depart from that practice and propose that cultural issues are equally important to consider. As we will argue, a cultural focus would enhance education for not only these students but for all students as well.

Specifically, we note that tendencies among teacher edu-cation programs to compartmentalize courses, learning experiences, degrees, and preservice teachers result from reductive notions of culture that frame students as possess-ing a set of fixed traits that require specific types of educa-tional interventions. In this article, we explore more dynamic notions of culture that emphasize what Gutiérrez and Rogoff (2003) refer to as students’ cultural repertoires of practice, and draw on these to explore what common knowledge and

expertise might be required of teachers across all educa-tional specializations. With this focus in mind, we first con-sider the relationship between ELs and special education in existing research and as it plays out in teacher preparation.

ELs and Special EducationELs represent the fastest growing student population in U.S. public schools. Whereas the general student population rose by only 2.6% between 1995 and 2005, the percentage of EL students in U.S. schools increased by more than 57%. EL students speak hundreds of different languages; however, 85% of them speak one of five languages: Spanish, Vietnamese, Hmong, Cantonese, and Korean, with 75% of all ELs speaking Spanish (National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs, 2007). Schools in urban centers, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami, and U.S. regions, such as the Southwest and Northeast—all longtime immigrant destinations—continue to see increases in the EL student population. However, following shifts in the economy and job availability, the most rapid growth of ELs is currently taking place in schools in southern states, such as Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, and Tennessee; rural schools through-out the United States are also experiencing significant increases in the EL student population (Education Week,

446511 JTEXXX10.1177/0022487112446511Rueda and StillmanJournal of Teacher Education

1Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA USA

Corresponding Author:Robert Rueda, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California, 3470 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USAEmail: [email protected]

The 21st Century Teacher: A Cultural Perspective

Robert Rueda1 and Jamy Stillman1

Abstract

In this article, the authors focus on the disciplinary divides between multicultural, bilingual, and special education. Existing issues that inhibit closer integration of these areas are highlighted, and a focus on the issue of culture is examined. Problematic ways that this key area has been treated in the past are described, and a proposal for a cultural focus on all students is described.

Keywords

English learners; teacher education; special education; culture

at TEXAS SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY on December 16, 2014jte.sagepub.comDownloaded from

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246 Journal of Teacher Education 63(4)

2009). In other words, although the education of ELs used to be viewed primarily as a regional concern, it has become a topic of growing national import.

In addition to demographic shifts, research points to the considerable achievement and opportunity gaps that ELs who attend U.S. schools commonly experience. The results of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data from 2005, for example, indicate that nearly half (46%) of fourth-grade students in the EL category scored below basic in mathematics—the lowest possible level—with nearly three quarters (73%) scoring below basic in reading. Middle school achievement in mathe-matics and reading were also very low, with more than two thirds (71%) of eighth-grade ELs scoring below basic in math and an equal percentage of these students scoring below basic in reading (Fry, 2007). ELs are also among the most likely to leave school prior to high school gradu-ation (Kim, 2011). At the same time, research indicates that ELs are the students most likely to be taught by underqualified teachers and to attend underresourced schools (Gándara, Rumberger, Maxwell-Jolly, & Callahan, 2003). Clearly, preparing teachers to effectively serve ELs is of urgent concern.

An exploration of the relationship between ELs and spe-cial education in existing research inevitably leads to the literature on overrepresentation. This fairly significant body of work illustrates that, although EL overrepresentation in special education does not appear to be a national problem, ELs do tend to be overrepresented in special education in many states and districts (Artiles, Klinger, Sullivan, & Fierros, 2010; Artiles, Rueda, Salazar, & Higareda, 2005).

According to Ortiz and Artiles (2010), the overrepresen-tation of ELs in special education can be attributed to sev-eral interlinking factors. First, special need identification in ELs is especially complicated, in part because we have lim-ited knowledge regarding the relationship between language acquisition and disability. In addition, as second language learners, ELs may exhibit characteristics that resemble traits of students with learning or language disabilities, thereby complicating matters further (Ortiz, 1997). Second, ELs suffer persistently from inadequate opportunities to learn and poor access to teachers qualified to teach them (Gándara et al., 2003). These proclivities can no doubt lead to real academic struggles, and—given the prevalence of deficit ideologies surrounding ELs (Valencia, 2010)—tendencies to attribute such struggles to problems with students’ learn-ing rather than to deficiencies in instruction. Third, research increasingly reveals the culturally specific, socially con-structed nature of normality and disability (Smagorinsky, 2011) and the possibility that certain behaviors associated with learning disabilities may reflect typical practices for members of different cultural groups and/or those individu-als engaged in the process of acculturation (Collier & Hoover, 1987). Finally, there is growing evidence to suggest that the measurement tools commonly used to determine

students’ abilities and eligibility for special education are culturally and linguistically biased and, therefore, often fail to provide accurate assessments of ELs’ actual capacities (Collier & Hoover, 1987; Gándara & Baca, 2008).

Adding to such matters, the current policy climate, includ-ing high-stakes accountability policies mandated under No Child Left Behind and the growing number of anti-immigrant and English-only initiatives nationwide (August, Goldenberg, & Rueda, 2010), has created what Gándara and Baca (2008) refer to as a perfect storm for ELs. Specifically, they and oth-ers (e.g., Artiles et al., 2010) argue that such conditions have compounded the factors that typically lead to the misidentifi-cation of ELs as learning disabled, in particular, by further limiting ELs’ access to instruction and services that research has shown to benefit them.

ELs who indeed have learning disabilities certainly stand to benefit from targeted, individualized, and specialized special education services. ELs who have been misidentified as having a learning disability, however, unnecessarily face a host of potentially negative consequences. As Ortiz and Artiles (2010) explain, ELs who receive special education services commonly have access to fewer language support services than other ELs and are also more likely than their EL peers to be placed in English immersion programs—programs that research has shown to detrimentally affect ELs’ academic achievement/learning (August et al., 2010). Those ELs who receive special education services addition-ally tend to spend more time in segregated educational set-tings than do ELs without learning disabilities (Artiles et al., 2005; Zehler et al., 2003).

Research underscoring these common causes of EL over-representation in special education, as well as the potential consequences for ELs who receive special education services, sheds light on some of the serious risks ELs face in public schools. Recognition of such risks may encourage teachers and administrators to advocate on behalf of ELs in general and special education settings. However, authors of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) recog-nized these risks as symptoms of an incoherent educational system rather than as the fault of individual teachers, and in 2008 amended the Act with the aim of increasing communi-cation and collaboration across the general and special educa-tion communities.

We agree that some of the risks ELs face are indeed reflec-tions of an incoherent system. We also agree that improved communication and greater collaboration across communities are critical first steps, for example, to increasing ELs’ opportu-nities to learn across contexts, reducing incidents of misiden-tification, and ensuring ELs receive the support services they require, regardless of where and with whom they spend their days. That being said, most general and special education teachers currently lack the knowledge and skills necessary to make good on IDEA’s provisions to “crossover” to support ELs within and for different settings. This problem, which we argue is an important (but not exclusive) factor in ELs’ special



Rueda and Stillman 247

education participation described above, is a significant one for preservice teacher preparation.

The Organization of Preservice Teacher EducationState-level policy has been shown to have a considerable impact on teacher education programs and practices (e.g., Berlak, 2003; Kornfeld, Grady, Marker, & Ruddell, 2007; Peck, Gallucci, & Sloan, 2010). It is therefore worth noting that requirements related to the preparation of general edu-cation teachers of ELs vary considerably across states. As of 2008, only 4 states articulated specific coursework or certification requirements for all teachers, whereas 17 states’ teacher education standards referenced the particular needs of ELs (Ballantyne, Sanderman, & Levy, 2008). Although these numbers have increased slightly over the last several years, even teacher education programs located in states with clear standards for preparing linguistically responsive teachers tend to make incremental, rather than systemic, program changes, oftentimes without articulating the knowledge base that underlies them or amending estab-lished theoretical perspective(s) to support them (Lucas, Villegas, & Freedson-Gonzalez, 2008). In addition, numer-ous states’ standards still include only vague or no refer-ences to language diversity.

Attention to special education in general teacher education tends to be similarly marginalized (Pugach, Blanton, & Correa, 2011). In most cases, states’ general teacher education stan-dards include vague statements related to differentiating instruction and meeting needs of students with exceptionali-ties. Within teacher education programs, general education candidates may become familiar with the logistics of special education (e.g., what an Individualized Educational Plan [IEP] involves, the basics of Response to Intervention [RTI], etc.), and with the range of abilities commonly exhibited by students in mainstream classrooms.

Though not a universal phenomenon, those candidates interested in becoming special education teachers typically participate in a separate program of study altogether, which may or may not attend to issues related to students’ cultural and linguistic diversity or explore intersections between lan-guage and learning needs. As is the case in general teacher education, content related to linguistic diversity tends to be tacked on, as opposed to fully integrated. This tendency likely reflects now decades-old tensions between the behaviorist perspectives on learning that tend to hold sway in special edu-cation circles and the sociocultural perspectives that more often than not underlie research and practice related to linguis-tic diversity (Hale et al., 2010; Steele, 2005).

It is easy to see how this relatively typical program organi-zation would map directly onto the causes of EL dispropor-tionality in special education and the potentially negative consequences for ELs who receive special education services. To be sure, although general education candidates may

graduate from teacher education having some sense of how to provide targeted instruction for ELs, they are unlikely to understand the relationship between language and cultural issues and ability issues—an understanding that is critical to making sound identification decisions, but would require preservice teachers to independently make sophisticated connections between disparate courses. Special education graduates are likely to leave teacher preparation with simi-lar gaps in understanding, potentially rendering them ill equipped to recognize when ELs have unmet needs relating to language and culture rather than a disability. Given the trends in special education teacher education program orga-nization, graduates are also unlikely to have the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for providing special edu-cation instruction that takes into consideration ELs’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

Increasing pressure on general education teachers to pro-vide in-class services for students with special needs like-wise raises questions about the kind of preparation all teachers will need to attend to ELs’ ability and linguistic and cultural needs simultaneously. This is of particular concern given recent findings illustrating the potential pitfalls of using a one-size-fits-all approach to RTI and recommenda-tions that teachers adapt RTI to accommodate individual and contextual factors, including students’ cultural and lin-guistic backgrounds (Klinger & Edwards, 2006). Research highlighting teachers’ tendencies while using RTI to focus narrowly on ability absent a consideration of cultural and linguistic issues, likewise raise questions about traditional preparation models that provide few opportunities for gen-eral and special education candidates to learn about stu-dents’ intersecting needs or to explore an integrated approach to instruction (Artiles, Bal, & King Thorius, 2010).

In response to the marginalized treatment of linguistic diversity in teacher education, Lucas et al. (2008) posit key principles of second language learning (e.g., ELs must have access to “comprehensible input”, social interaction fosters language development, etc.) and specific pedagogi-cal approaches (e.g., supplementing and modifying written text, engaging ELs in purposeful activities, etc.) that all general education teacher candidates should learn. Notably, they underscore the importance of teacher educators com-prehensively integrating these principles and practices into teacher education programs—rather than treating them as supplements to the existing curriculum.

Working to diminish the marginalization of linguistic diversity in general teacher education certainly serves as a viable starting point for preparing linguistically responsive teachers. Indeed, one could argue that taking a similar approach with special education teacher candidates or work-ing to integrate special education topics within general teacher education would be just as essential.

However, and as we argue in the subsequent section, changes such as these, though important, are not positioned to address the deep divisions that exist between the general




and special education communities in preservice and inservice settings. In particular, we argue that these divisions—which often manifest as compartmentalization and inco-herence—reflect reductive notions of culture that convey to preservice teachers one-dimensional—as opposed to inter-secting—characterizations of students and instructional approaches.

We then consider robust notions of culture that allow for more dynamic understandings of students and instruc-tional approaches and can offer direction for a more inte-grated approach across teacher preparation specializations. Specifically, we argue for an approach that engages all teachers in “teaching culturally,” thereby treating lan-guage as a key dimension of all students’ cultural reper-toires of practice and supporting the integration of linguistic diversity into the teacher education curriculum, as Lucas et al. (2008) suggest. We believe that such a shift would provide the foundation and traction necessary for all preservice teachers to (a) understand and apply the key principles and practices needed to effectively serve ELs, (b) better serve other K-12 students who have also fared poorly in the education system, and (c) reduce some of the barriers that have typically hindered collaboration across specializations.

A Cultural ApproachThere have been notable differences in how culture has been conceptualized over time in the field of education. Table 1 provides a brief overview of these changes. Although there is certainly overlap and the time periods are approximations for heuristic purposes and should not be considered as pre-cise markers, it is hard to argue that views have not shifted over the last half-century.

Although deficit views of language and cultural differ-ences are less prevalent than in previous decades, they con-tinue to be a problem (Valencia, 2010). Other issues related to how cultural factors have been viewed, including the fol-lowing, have proven problematic, as well:

• Ethnic and/or racial labels are used synonymously with culture—such that the ethnic/racial label is presumed to convey information about cultural traits of those within the group.

• Within-group differences are ignored or minimized when speaking about cultural groups.

• Some “additive” multicultural approaches to educa-tion attempt to create environments with the intent of celebrating cultural differences and increasing knowledge about various cultures—however, these attempts are sometimes divorced from instructional practice and mainstream content. In the worst cases, the focus is based on unfounded generaliza-tions and stereotypes and/or surface features such as food, dress, and presumed beliefs and practices.

• Cultural factors (and other sociocultural factors such as language) are relegated to specialists—who are deemed qualified based on training, degree, or a shared cultural background with students.

• This reliance on specialists is reflected in teacher-training institutions that prepare teachers and other specialists.

More recent scholarship offers evidence that what teach-ers may assume to be cultural “deficits” and “differences” can instead be used as instructional resources (e.g., González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Lee, 2007). This body of work illus-trates how students’ everyday cultural practices, including their language practices, can be integrated with instruction and leveraged to facilitate academic learning. Trends in teacher education to prepare culturally responsive practitio-ners reflect these advancements in understanding and have done much to challenge deficit or difference orientations toward students, as well as universalist notions, which tend to treat culture and language as peripheral to—as opposed to central aspects of—learning.

Even within a culturally responsive orientation, however, culture has almost always exclusively been considered with reference to students who are not White. That is, cultural

Table 1. Conceptualizations of Cultural Factors in Education Over Time

Perspective on culture Description Time period Representative citation

Deficit Cultural differences are negative factors that impede education and should be minimized or erased

1960s-1970s Bereiter and Engelmann (1966)

Difference Culture differences exist, but they represent differences, not deficits

1970s-1980s Au and Mason (1983)

Universal Cultural differences exist, but play a minimal role in learning or educational practice, good teaching is universally applicable

1990s Cognitive strategy instruction (Chamot & O’Malley, 1996)

Culturally responsive, “assets” approach

Culture and cultural practices are useful resources, which can be used to design instruction

1990s-present Lee (2007); Moll and Arnot-Hopffner (2005)




factors are usually only noted when differences are evident for students from non-White ethnic or racial groups. This is understandable, given the fact that work from a wide vari-ety of disciplines demonstrates that there are differences between the interactional and discourse features, norms, and expectations of home/community and school for many culturally and linguistically diverse students. There is an especially rich descriptive literature that paints a picture of how these differences are exhibited in classroom settings in a variety of activities (e.g., Au, 2001; McCarthey, 1997; Michaels, 1981; Moje et al., 2004; Orellana, Reynolds, Dorner, & Meza, 2003).

However, in contrast to these varying conceptualiza-tions that emphasize cultural issues for certain groups only, we take as a starting point of this discussion that culture is fundamental to all human activity, including teaching and learning processes both in and out of school (Rogoff, 2003). We argue that one way to address many of these issues and to help bridge divides that exist in teacher education and the K-12 system is to ensure that all teach-ers teach culturally without regard to student characteris-tics. To understand the basis for this proposal, it is necessary to understand the way that we conceptualize culture.

Cultural ConsiderationsCulture is a term that is frequently used in educational and out-of-school settings. Many people have an intuitive notion of what culture means, although even in the social and behavioral literature there is a great deal of variance in meaning. One view of culture is that it represents collective societal achievements such as art, music, science, knowl-edge, cultural institutions, and so on. In this view, societies or individuals do not have discrete cultures; rather they fall along a continuum of progress in relation to a general cul-ture created by humans up to the present. In this view, societies, groups, or individuals can be ranked according to their placement along this hypothetical continuum (Gallego, Cole, & LCHC, 2001).

A different view, one that we draw on here, is that cul-ture is a reflection of the particular historical circum-stances of specific groups. It refers to the daily patterns of living or cultural practices that allow individuals to relate to the surrounding social and physical environment. That is, culture consists of the collective wisdom and problem solving activities needed to survive and prosper in a given environment. In this view, culture is learned, is created and re-created in an ongoing fashion, is expressed through cul-tural practices (behavior, artifacts, rules, etc.) that charac-terize daily life (Gallimore & Goldenberg, 2001), and is a universal feature of daily life for all humans (Rogoff, 2003). By this definition, culture is dynamic, contextually variable, and unevenly expressed (Erickson, 2004; Gallego et al., 2001).

Many authors (Gallimore & Goldenberg, 2001; Gee, 2000; Strauss & Quinn, 1998) have suggested that cultural beliefs and practices are organized as cultural models which are situated, social constructions of the world that shape one’s understanding of the world and one’s behavior in it. These cultural models are thought to be so familiar and automated that they are often invisible and unnoticed.

This notion of culture is quite different from that enacted in many schools and teacher preparation programs, where the focus tends to be on surface differences between sub-groups or where cultural influences are seen to be a homo-geneous, static, and internally consistent set of rules for behavior that continually affect individual’s everyday activ-ities in predictable ways. However, as Gallimore and Goldenberg (2001) note,

Culture is not a nominal variable to be attached equally to every individual like a “social” address, in the same way that age, height, or gender might be. Treating culture in this way assumes that everyone who claims membership in or is assigned to a group has common natal experiences and acts on available cultural models in a uniform, unvarying fashion. In many cases they do not. Assuming homogeneity of experience and behavior of individuals within cul-tures, without empirical evidence, is unwarranted. (pp. xii-xiii; italics in original)

Of importance here is the realization that the key to understanding cultural influences on learning is to under-stand an individual’s specific experiences that influence the cultural models that they have developed. By implication, then, it is critical to examine what people actually do in terms of cultural practices and how and why those practices developed rather than making unsubstantiated inferences about cultural factors in learning (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003; Moll & Arnot-Hopffner, 2005). As these authors note, cultural influences are variable across individuals as well as across settings for the same individual.

Implications of a Cultural PerspectiveWhat are the implications of this view of culture, and of the problematic ways, noted above, that have been made to integrate cultural factors into educational practice, for bridging professional divides and for teacher education programs and professional development in general? Given the ways that culture has been treated, it is critical that teacher education programs provide a more nuanced and theoretically sound perspective on culture and education to overcome the issues noted earlier. In addition, the proposal is that all teachers learn how to “teach culturally” rather than teaching “about” culture—even in classes where there are no students who are non-White or who are ELs.




Moreover, this perspective needs to be a central part of the educational experience of all teacher candidates—not just those who may think they are going to teach one or more “special” populations on completing their program or degree. This suggests that all teaching and learning is cul-tural, and that cultural factors are an important factor for all learners independent of any labels or subgroups into which they may be categorized.

This perspective calls for teachers to become informed observers of all students and their lives and communities and the range of cultural contexts and experiences they have had access to. It calls for developing expertise in documenting all students’ actual cultural practices, including their language practices. Most importantly, it calls for expertise in then leveraging that information to further instructional goals and integrating this new knowledge to further academic gains. For faculty in schools of education, it means that the expertise among faculty to accomplish these goals cannot be confined only to those who are specialists or who work in specialized areas—Rather, all faculty need to become knowledgeable about the relationship between culture, teaching, and learn-ing, in all academic areas. We propose that this approach rep-resents one means to loosen disciplinary chains, real or imagined, that have so long plagued the field.

Importantly, we do not assume that applying this concep-tion of culture to teacher education will serve as a panacea for ELs or for other students, for that matter. Rather, we are suggesting that viewing all students as cultural beings and recognizing one’s central charge as “teaching all students culturally,” ought to become a foundational perspective, “habit of mind,” even a precondition for teachers learning about and enacting specific principles or pedagogies essen-tial to the practice of teaching. This syncing of ideological and pedagogical clarity would ideally support all teacher candidates to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to facilitate learning among students with varying abilities and representing a range of cultural and linguistic communities.

More specifically, preparing all teachers to teach cultur-ally would work to disrupt the practice of assigning discrete labels to students, supporting teachers instead to develop awareness about students’ multifaceted identities and inter-secting needs (Gutiérrez, Ali, & Henríquez, 2010). Such a shift would also support all teacher candidates to develop a shared language and common understandings about teach-ing and learning. This would allow for the kind of improved communication and collaboration called for by IDEA, while offering preservice teachers the option to develop expertise or specializations in a more situated, coherent, and theoretically grounded way. Applying this notion of culture would additionally challenge the prevailing assump-tion that some students are “normal” and therefore require traditional instruction whereas others are different or abnormal and, therefore, require some sort of instructional accommodation. This shift in thinking would push up against the traditional notion of “differentiation as

intervention” for students who struggle to learn material in mainstream ways, and would instead prompt teachers to plan for difference from the outset and for all students. Given the centrality of language in culture, for example, this approach would demand that teacher candidates learn to plan instruction in relation to all students’ language prac-tices (e.g., by developing knowledge about the principles and practices posited by Lucas et al., 2008), regardless of whether they will work in mainstream or special education settings and regardless of whether they will serve students considered to be language minorities. Finally, preparing all teachers to teach culturally would support teachers to respond productively to today’s policy climate, including restrictive language policies. Specifically, teachers’ under-standings of the critical role that language and culture play in all learning would press them to engage adaptively with rigid reforms that deny students—and particularly those from underserved groups—opportunities to draw fully on cultural and linguistic resources (Stillman, 2011; Stillman & Anderson 2011). Together, these shifts in thinking and practice could serve to mitigate issues related to the mis-identification of ELs for special education described earlier in the article, as well as the potentially negative conse-quences for ELs who receive special education services.

What are the obstacles to such an undertaking? As we noted earlier in the manuscript, an important obstacle has to do with the specialization and compartmentalization charac-teristic of most teacher education programs (Pugach et al., 2011). This structural feature tends to inhibit collaboration, communication, and sharing of knowledge. Related to this is the limited number of individuals who have the knowl-edge and experience necessary for leading such an effort. Indeed, few educators have had the opportunity or the prep-aration necessary to operate within what Pugach and Blanton (2012)—drawing on Anzaldua’s (1987) seminal work—characterize as the “borderlands” between special and general education, or

the places that enable you to not “be” one thing or the other—in this case a general or a special educator—but rather to become individuals who draw on multiple experiences and skills in an effort to create a new vision in an entirely new space. (p. 34)

Together, these limitations have implications for how we think about and organize the preparation of the next genera-tion of teacher educators, who typically attend traditional doctoral programs that are themselves compartmentalized by field of study (e.g., psychology, policy, curriculum, and instruction), and where candidates are expected to become subject matter specialists. In other words, reorganizing pre-service teacher education in accordance with the recommen-dations laid out in this manuscript would likely require the reconceptualization and reconfiguration of whole schools or Departments of Education, as well.




Another important issue has to do with the knowledge base to support this proposal. For one, scholars have only recently begun to develop frameworks for conceptualizing “collaborative” approaches to teacher education that attempt to disrupt the compartmentalization found in most programs (Blanton & Pugach, 2011). In addition, although there are certainly very strong examples in the literature where a “cul-tural assets” approach has been used to great advantage (Doherty, Hilberg, Pinal, & Tharp, 2003; Gay, 2000; González et al., 2005; Hollins & Oliver, 1999; Ladson-Billings, 1994, 1995; Lee, 2007), a central focus of the research has been descriptive rather than explanatory, focused on detailed and accurate description of social, cultural, and linguistic pro-cesses in specific settings and activities. Thus far, most work has addressed the “what is?” question regarding cultural pro-cesses and cultural factors, and relatively less work has addressed the “what are the effects of?” question (Goldenberg, Rueda, & August, 2006). Most of the available studies have not looked at student outcomes directly, such as measures of reading or literacy acquisition, and only rarely have used proximal indicators of achievement (i.e., engagement; Goldenberg et al., 2006, p. 260) or other indicators of student development. It should be made clear that we are not arguing for a narrow view of “outcomes” focused primarily on stan-dardized test scores because students’ academic lives cannot be adequately captured by such a limited lens. In any case, by expanding the research base on this important question, schools of education have a unique opportunity to help con-tribute to what appears to be a promising approach to reduc-ing the ubiquitous achievement differences that have plagued American education for decades.

ConclusionTwo factors that will shape the overall context in which teach-ers and schools will be asked to carry out their mission in the coming decades are demographics and changing workforce requirements (Rueda, in press). These changes have important implications for the type of preparation teachers will need and the educational settings in which they will work. A narrow view would suggest that these variations call for teacher preparation that targets teaching students who come from backgrounds that are characterized by cultural practices and worldviews that may differ from those found in “mainstream” classrooms and settings. However, we have argued that this approach continues the practice of partialization and separa-tion and compartmentalization that is the focus of this issue—a practice that appears to leave students, such as ELs, vulnerable to superficial, misguided, and, in some cases, harmful attempts to meet their intersecting needs. Rather, we have argued for an approach that engages all teachers and specialists in “teaching culturally”—no matter the back-ground, setting, or students—as a way to reduce some of the barriers that have typically hindered collaboration across specializations and as a way to best serve the students who

have traditionally fared less well in the education system. This approach requires that we see culture differently than has been the case in the past, and that we rethink the type of preparation needed to accomplish this.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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About the Authors

Robert Rueda is the Stephen H. Crocker Professor of Education at the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California, where he teaches in the area of psychology in educa-tion. He also has a joint appointment in the psychology department. His research has centered on the sociocultural basis of motivation, learning, and instruction, with a focus on reading and literacy in English Learners, and students in at-risk conditions, and he teaches courses in learning and motivation.

Jamy Stillman is an assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education. Her research interests include the preparation of teachers to serve historically marginalized populations, especially English Learners, and the impact of high-stakes accountability on teachers, teaching, and learning to teach in urban high-needs schools.



Documents

The 21st Century Teacher: A Cultural Perspective