Effective Teaching Strategies for Creating Optimal Learning Conditions for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students: How A Latina First Grade Teacher Merges Theory and Practice to Challenge Traditional Pedagogy and Policy
Julie L. Figueroa(UC Berkeley)and Erminda Garcia (San Francisco Unified School District)

This workshop is based on a small-scale qualitative study which documented effective teaching strategies that were used to successfully address the needs of two distinct diverse student populations in Mrs. Erminda Garcia's first grade bilingual classroom at a school located just outside the Mission District in San Francisco. The overall objective of this workshop is as follows. First, it is important to understand the value of having a researcher-practitioner relationship particularly with respect to theory-practice. Second, through dialogue, we will make sense of how this teacher creates a classroom that can be described as student-centered learning that is authentic and meaningful. Third, we will discuss three teaching strategies which Mrs. Garcia refers to as instructional opportunities that were effective in creating a community of learners where cultural and linguistic differences are rearticulated as strengths and resources. This teacher created a social context that encouraged and planned for the collaborative use of student's cultural and linguistic repertoires which assured students social, linguistic, and academic success. Fourth, we will explore the implications of formal and informal district-wide policies that create schools and classrooms. District and school policies often reinforce the idea that language minority students lack the necessary resources to contribute to each other's academic development. Most districts narrowly define success based on skills tests, thereby disregarding students knowledge and linguistic collateral. To this end, the heart of the presentation centers on discussing the teaching strategies I documented in Mrs. Garcia's classroom. This will be helpful in facilitating a reflexive dialogue between theory and practice that can be used to examine this first grade bilingual classroom.

The significance of this study became evident in reference to the fact that today the student population in U. S. schools is more linguistically and culturally diverse (Cortés, 1994; Garcia & Gonzalez, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 1994; McLaughlin & McLeod, 1996; Villegas, 1994). According to the 1995-96 Public School Summary Statistics, a report released by the Educational Demographics Unit at the California Department of Education (1995), over half of California's students are non-White: Latino (n= 2, 118,028- 39%), African American (n= 478, 9128- 8%), and Asian (n= 449,525- 8%). In contrast, the teacher populations is no where nearly as diverse. Of the total teacher population (N= 232, 488), White teachers represent close to 80% (n= 184, 196) , while Black (n= 11, 783- 5%), Latino (n= 22, 525- 10%), Asian (n= 8,706- 4%) teachers make up less than half. The school, in this presentation, parallels these statics. Population-wise, the school has 391 students with the following ethnic break down: 42% Latino, 38% African American, 9% White, 2% Chinese, 4% Filipino and less than one percent of American Indian and no Japanese or Korean students. Staff-wise, the school has 22 Certified Staff with the following ethnic break down: 14% Latino, 73% Other White, 5% African American, 5% Japanese and 5% Other Non White, and no Chinese, Korean, American Indian and Filipino teachers. For scholars studying the academic achievement of minority students, this gross disproportion of minority students to minority teachers raises serious concerns about how cultural differences may affect academic performance.

The two leading theories, namely cultural differences and the minority status model, used to explore cultural differences and academic success, though helpful, are limited in their perspectives to comprehend the educational experiences students in general, and, specifically culturally and linguistically diverse student populations. The cultural differences perspective, as pointed out by Phelan, Davidson, & Yu (1993) and Moll (1992), overlooks at how other social realms such as family, friendships, and tutorial programs, for instance, can mediate cultural differences. Moreover, Trueba (1989) believes that most discussions concerning cultural differences most often exclude teachers, school administrators, and other school officials from assuming any responsibility for the underachievement of their students. The home, culture, parents and students are blamed for underachievement. This perspective also neglects to address those situations where minority students do well in school even though their home culture and school culture are identified as "incompatible". Lastly, it is important to consider how sociohistorical factors contribute to shaping individual realities (Ogbu, 1993; Villegas, 1994). Similarly, the minority status model is limited in explaining academic success in terms of cultural differences. First, it dismisses the possibility of intergenerational differences within a community let alone a family. Thus, people are discussed in homogeneous terms. Secondly, this view discusses academic achievement within a linear framework. That is, it ignores the fact that academic performance in school is not necessarily static. We cannot take for granted how the nature of academic achievement occurs for students. Bottom-line, maintaining cultural differences in this literature becomes a form of resistance in opposition to the mainstream culture. This practiced resistance is viewed as a tragic impediment to achieving academic success. While there are important theoretical debates about how to understand cultural differences and the influences of culture, and for that matter language, on academic performance, scholars do agree it remains crucial to address cultural differences in a responsive and reflective manner.

Recent studies find that the academic performance of minority students greatly improves when teachers have high expectations for their students, get to know students, engage with students in meaningful and genuine ways, and follow a curriculum that is culturally relevant to the lives of students (Erickson, 1987; Ladson-Billings, 1994; McLaughlin & McLeod, 1996; Rivera & Poplin, 1997). This workshop provides both the evidence and purposefully draws out the incentives for promoting multicultural practices to aggressively challenge theories, specifically cultural differences and minority status models, traditionally used within the realm of education to explain academic performance among culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Research in the area of cultural differences presumes that cultural compatibility between teachers and students facilitates a greater opportunity for learning. Observations made in Mrs. Garcia's classroom, however, made me revisit this idea of cultural differences and how often times we speak of cultural differences with respect to cultural similarities, applicable to a homogeneous ethnic population. While there may be similarities, there are also specificities that make Latinos, in this case, heterogeneous. For instance, Mrs. Garcia is Mexican American and the majority of her students are Central American, not Mexican. There are differences in language use, vocabulary use, and cultural and ethnic histories that make the teacher distinct from her students. In addition to these students, Mrs. Garcia also teachers three African American students, one Asian American student, and one Latino student who like the African American and Asian students uses English as their primary language. Given that it is a bilingual classroom, these five students are becoming bilingual and work well within this bilingual setting. In contrast to the association made between assimilation and academic achievement, we begin to understand that academic success of non-white students is possible when students' cultural and linguistic backgrounds are acknowledged and incorporated into the curriculum. Mrs. Garcia creates a social context that encourages and plans for the collaborative use of students' cultural and linguistic repertoires which assures students social, linguistic, and academic success. This process transforms items of resistance into resources for learning. Mrs. Garcia takes time out for reflection and to develop relationships with the students, their families and the community. All these factors enrich the learning environment. The challenges most associated with meeting the needs of diverse student populations became this teacher's opportunity to move beyond traditional bilingual pedagogy.

Given the diverse student body in Mrs. Garcia's classroom, we need to consider the implications for supporting teacher-researcher, teacher-teacher, and teacher-student-community relationships. In this study, we see how these relationships are indispensable to teaching and learning at a caliber that is beyond just "meeting-the-requirements". The professional and collaborative relationship with Mrs. Garcia, which has been ongoing for the last four years, has been an invaluable experience--we think more profoundly and reflectively about teaching and learning. My capacity to evaluate the relationship between theory and practice in this Mrs. Garcia's classroom has helped to appreciate the extent to which educational policies can often restrict the learning and teaching of culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Too often educational theories are decontextualized, this presentation grounds theory in the context of classroom observations and extensive conversations with Mrs. Garcia. The overall intent of this presentation is to generate new ways of approaching teaching and learning and, in turn, to think about the possibilities for modifying policies that hinder the kind of teaching strategies discussed in this presentation.

Bibliography

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