Culture and Education

• The lecture covers culture, diversity, stereotypes, prejudice, discrimination, socioeconomic status, and teaching strategies for diverse student populations.
• It emphasizes understanding cultural differences, avoiding biases, and promoting equity in education.

Research Cycle

• Cycle involves questions, data gathering/analysis, and theory modification.
• New and better questions are formulated as part of the cycle.

What is Culture?

• Culture includes knowledge, values, attitudes, and traditions that guide a group's behavior
• Allows members to solve problems in their environment.
• Cultural groups can be defined by geographic region, nationality, race/ethnicity, gender, social class, or religion.
• Wide variations occur within each group.

American Cultural Diversity

• Modern countries contain many different cultures.
• Cultures vary in rural/urban settings, wealth, and education levels.
• Common aspects include shared values, history, traditions, and experiences.
• Only one third of culture is visible.
• The rest is hidden and unknown, influencing areas like relationships that are unconscious.
• Cultural influences are widespread and pervasive.

Cautions: Interpreting Cultural Differences

• Research often focuses on one variable at a time
• Children are complex
• Intersectionality shapes individuals uniquely
• Group membership is one factor, not the only factor

Terms and Labels

• Terminology evolves which is a reminder to use preferred terms.
• You should use the terms that individuals and/or communities use to describe themselves, their experiences, and their practices.

Let's Talk About Stereotypes

• Stereotypes are schemas that help organize and interpret information, but can also be oversimplified and based on limited data.schemas
• These schemas can be helpful in new situations and aid in recall.
• Stereotypes can be both good and bad.

What is Prejudice?

• Prejudice means pre-judgement
• It is an irrational generalization about a group of people based on beliefs, emotions, actions, and cultural values.
• Bias is a prejudicial preference or action.
• Bias can be positive or negative
• Can begin to develop at an early age.
• Human tendency toward in-group/out-group dynamics and favorable attributions about ourselves.
• Stereotypes are schemas that organize what is known, believed, and felt about a group.
• These schemas are often based on incomplete, limited, biased information.

Stereotype Threat

• Stereotype threat involves apprehension about confirming a stereotype.
• It adds an extra emotional and cognitive burden
• This performance may appear to confirm a negative stereotype that others hold.
• Stereotype threat interferes with attention, working memory, and learning
• It decreases connections to and value of that subject.
• It also likely contributes to the achievement gap.

Short-Term and Long-Term Effects

• Short-term effects include poor test performance

• For example, lower math scores for women and African Americans when stereotype threat is present.

• Long-term effects can cause disidentification

• Students may feel disconnected, less motivated, or withdrawn.

• Combating strategies involve valuing diversity and teaching a growth mindset

Social Class and SES

• Social class reflects wealth, prestige, and power in society.
• Socioeconomic Status (SES) is determined by wealth, power, resources, and prestige, often overpowering other cultural differences.
• SES includes free or reduced price lunch as a rough indicator.

SES, Achievement, Health & Stress

• SES and academic achievement are moderately correlated.
• High-SES students average higher achievement and stay in school longer than low-SES students.
• Chronic stress impacts attention, growth, and health.
• Complex factors cause lower achievement, including health, environment, expectations, peer groups, resources, summer learning loss, and negative assumptions
• Also low academic self-concept and learned helplessness

Peer Influences and Resistance Cultures

• Students are more likely to attend college if their peers are from middle- to high-income families.
• In high-poverty schools, students are more likely to have friends who drop out.
• Resistance culture resists school achievement and acting middle class.
• Educators need to be "equity literate" to make school an inclusive place

Home Environment and Resources

• Explanations for lower achievement of students in poverty include lack of access to preschool, less reading, more TV, and greater summer setbacks.
• Children begin school behind in reading skills and continue to lose ground, especially in the summer.
• May be tracked into lower quality schools with fewer resources and inexperienced teachers.

Extreme Poverty: Homeless and Highly Mobile Students

• Inevitable physical, social, and learning difficulties
• Achievement decreases the longer a child remains in poverty.
• There is a growing achievement gap between privileged children and children in poverty

Summer Learning Loss

• Lower income kids typically fall behind in the summer

Teaching Students Who Live in Poverty

• Learn about the effects of poverty on student learning.
• Set and maintain high expectations.
• Develop caring teacher-student relationships
• Teach organizational and self-regulation skills.
• Pay attention to health problems, absences, and tardiness.

Race and Ethnicity

• Ethnicity is culturally transmitted behavior.
• Race is a socially constructed category based on appearances. Both are primarily social constructions.
• A minority group is socially disadvantaged, but is not always a numerical minority.
• Report "race-ethnicity" in studies.

Ethnicity and Schools

• Conflicts can arise from differences in culture-based beliefs, values, and expectations
• Especially in culturally diverse settings.

Ethnic and Racial Differences in School Achievement

• Achievement gaps are narrowing, but concerns remain for students of color and poverty.
• There are educational debts due to history of underinvestment and discrimination
• Must focus on successes of ethnic students

The Legacy of Inequality

• Segregation was outlawed.
• Many schools are more segregated today
• This can be attributed to economic factors.

From Prejudice to Discrimination

• Discrimination is acting on one's beliefs or prejudices and involves unequal treatment.
• It's prevalent toward specific groups in the U.S. education system
• Teachers often unknowingly act prejudiced
• Can affect parents, educational outcomes, and student motivation

Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes Experiment

• A lesson on discrimination that reveals the power of expectations.

Gender in Teaching and Learning

• Terminology includes gender, sex, gender identity, gender roles, and sexual orientation.
• Important for teachers to provide equitable education and address harassment/bullying
• Also creating gender inclusive spaces and treating students' with respect

Gender Identity

• Gender identity may differ from sex assigned at birth.
• Transgender individuals are vulnerable to stigma
• They may be discriminated against, and may feel less confident in academic capabilities.

Gender Bias in Curriculum Materials and Media

• Gender bias involves different views and favoring one gender over the other
• Must be able to represent males and females equally through illustrations and defy stereotypes.
• Screening of classroom materials is crucial.
• Note the bias of white male characters

Gender Bias in Teaching

• Involves more interactions with boys.
• Boys are favored in teachers’ perceptions of math competence
• Is an international concern that boys underachieve.
• Best solution: always pursue good teaching practices

Guidelines: Avoiding Gender Bias in Teaching

• Always be vigilant about comments, teaching practices, and grading.
• Provide counter-stereotypic role models.

Sexual Orientation

• Sexual orientation is separate from gender identity.
• It also consists of distinct aspects of development.
• Discrimination occurs against sexual minority youth/
• Teachers should make support visible, listen, affirm, and connect students to resources.

Creating Culturally Compatible Classrooms

• Multicultural education aims for equity in education of all students
• Multicultural education should have five dimensions: content integration, knowledge construction, prejudice reduction, empowering school culture, and equity pedagogy.
• There is no general agreement about the best approach.

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

• Teaching should rest on student academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness.
• Believe in the children; believe all children are capable
• Know your students; help them value excellence

Sociolinguistics and Cultural Discontinuity

• Sociolinguistics involves formal and informal rules of conversations within cultural groups.
• Cultural discontinuity occurs with the mismatch of communication norms in home culture and school culture

Lessons for Teachers: Teaching Every Student

• Know yourself, your students, and their backgrounds/legacies.
• Respect and build students' self-images.
• Hold high expectations and provide caring support.
• Instruct students directly about how to be students.

Quiz questions on culture, cultural awareness, and biases in education. Explores cultural impact on relationships, intersectionality, and addressing unconscious biases. Highlights that group membership doesn't define an individual.