NIUSI

part of the Education Reform Networks

Group Identity

• Notes from California: An Anthropological Approach to Urban Science Education for Language Minority Families
  The author described a unique and ongoing collaboration involving a team of bilingual/multicultural teacher-educators, preservice teachers, teachers, students, and community members in an urban California elementary school. The author used critical ethnography as a framework and focuses on building an American garden house to show how, by drawing on participants' funds of knowledge, a new kind of multiscience can emerge.
• Black English in a Place Called Waterloo
  For many black students, the school language differs significantly from the home language, but preservice education rarely examines this issue. The author of this article examined implications for teaching children who use two different forms of language to navigate the demands of their contrasting sociolinguistic speech communities.
• Why are so many minority students in special education? Understanding race & disability in schools
  Scholars have discussed the overrepresentation of minority students in special education programs for high-incidence disability categories since long before the first federal law P. L.
• Issues of Discrimination in European Education Systems
  Examines difficulties and complexities in researching issues of discrimination in education across European countries as a first step in devising intercultural curricula. Discusses cross-national differences in terminology, in the ways in which research issues related to racism and interculturalism are formulated, and in the educational experience of children of immigrant and ex-colonial groups.
• The Power of Poetry
  Discusses poetry and the power it can have in elementary school classes. Considers why poetry is effective and the value of memorizing poems, and recommends multicultural titles for Blacks, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans that can help motivate children to read and write.
• Swimming: On Oxygen, Resistance, and Possibility for Immigrant Youth under Siege
  Researchers have shown that in today’s fast changing world and globalized economies, bilingualism and hybrid cultural identities of immigrant students may make them more successful in the U.S. and around the world.
• Multicultural Aspects of Parent Involvement in Transition Planning
  A survey of 308 African-American, Hispanic-American, Native-American, and European-American parents found that culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) parents are active in transition planning activities and, in some instances, their level of reported participation surpassed that of European-American parents. In contrast, 52 professionals described CLD parents as less involved.
• Teaching about Arab Americans: What Social Studies Teachers Should Know
  External influences in the universal culture have significantly affected the image of Arab Americans and their children. Although Arab Americans are less visible than other minorities, the anti-Arab perception in the media makes them more visible in a negative way.
• The Relationship between Racial Identity Cluster Profiles and Psychological Distress among African American College Students
  African American college students (N=182) completed the Racial Identity Attitudes Scale. Results from the multivariate categorization scheme revealed five types of empirically derived racial identity attitude profiles.
• Language Use of Mauritian Adolescents in Education
  Reports on a research project conducted in Mauritius that aimed to investigate patterns of language use, language choice, and language attitudes of Mauritian adolescents in full-time education. Data was collected by means of a questionnaire and interviews from a sample of the secondary school population.
• Equity for Black Americans in Precollege Science
  Explores many of the experiences that Black Americans have in science education in the United States and proposes changes so that Black Americans have an equitable opportunity to engage in and learn quality science. Suggestions include preparing multicultural science teachers, eliminating tracking in schools, equipping classes with science curriculum materials and technology, and supplying financial resources.
• How racial identity affects school performance.
  Today in the United States, race still affects where we live, pray, go to school, and socialize. It seems that for many years to come, race will undoubtedly continue to be a significant source of separation within our society.
• Representing the Inuit in Contemporary British and Canadian Juvenile Non-Fiction
  Examines text and pictorial representations of the Inuit in juvenile reference books and in geographical and historical juvenile non-fiction works. Finds continuing prevalence of a wide range of stereotypes.
• Preparing K-12 Teachers To Teach for Social Justice: An Experimental Exercise with a Focus on Inequality and Life-Chances Based on Socio-Economic Status
  The author describes a preservice multicultural education and social foundations course designed to expand awareness of and encourage an appreciation and respect for diversity, highlighting an experiential exercise that focuses on institutional inequities of socioeconomic status and that promotes critical thinking, cooperative group work, and making use of multiple intelligences.
• From Cradleboard to Motherboard: Buffy Sainte-Marie's Interactive Multimedia Curriculum Transforms Native American Studies
  Describes "Science: Through Native American Eyes," an interactive multimedia CD-ROM for middle school that is part of the Cradleboard Teaching Project developed by musician and teacher Buffy Sainte-Marie. The Cradleboard joins Native American tradition and high-tech innovation to explore the core curriculum of the National Content Standards.
• Educational change over time? The sustainability and nonsustainability of three decades of secondary school change and continuity
  This article is about long-term systemic sustainable change and applies to all educational leaders and policy makers. Based on a comparative research students conducted in Canada and the United States (US), the authors presented a conceptual framework, methodological design, and key research findings from a Spencer Foundation-funded project of long-term educational change over time.
• The Role of Critical Multicultural Education and Feminist Critical Thought in Teacher Education: Putting Theory Into Practice
  The authors identified current problems in teacher education by recognizing larger social dilemmas and the need for change. The authors discussed the need to acknowledge one's perpetuation of social problems and examined how to transform schooling through a major shift in critical reflection on social issues.
• Increasing African-American Teachers' presence in American Schools: Voices of students who care.
  The author presents the narratives of several African American students to illustrate the impact on students of having or not having African American teachers. Students' descriptions of their interactions with and praise for African American teachers illuminate why recruiting more teachers of color is important not only to the profession but also to the students themselves.
• Cultural Diversity: Practising What We Preach in Higher Education
  Argues for the need to put into practice policies of multicultural education using case studies of three individuals from three different cultural backgrounds. These individuals used their own cultural diversity as a model of successful intercultural teamwork in planning and implementing a multicultural education course for undergraduate teacher education students at the University of Canberra (Australia).
• Dating Violence among Chinese American and White Students: A Sociocultural Context
  A survey of 289 Chinese American and 138 White college students examined perceptions of and experiences with dating violence, gender role beliefs, and the influence of gender role beliefs on definitions and contextual justifications of dating violence. The sociocultural context of dating violence and implications for social work practice are discussed.
• African American Giftedness: Our Nation's Deferred Dream
  The author addresses issues that have perpetuated the underrepresentation of African Americans in gifted and talented programs, which include: inadequate definitions, standardized testing, nomination procedures, learning style preferences, family and peer influences, screening and identification, and gifted underachievers. He concludes by discussing alternative theories of giftedness and the implementation of multicultural education in teacher education programs.
• White Teachers/Black Schools; Stories from Apartheid South Africa
  Interviewed white teachers in apartheid-era South Africa who taught in segregated schools for black students, all of whom believed that they were part of the fight against apartheid. Though they taught in segregated schools, they worked to facilitate students' political awareness and voice.
• Reading Enhancement for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children through Multicultural Empowerment
  The author considers how learning to read can be difficult for Deaf students, but the task is even harder for Deaf minority students. She explores strategies to inspire an interest in reading and multicultural acceptance for Deaf and hearing students alike.
• Special Education or Racial Segregation: Understanding Variation in the Representation of Black Students in Educable Mentally Handicapped Programs
  The disproportionate representation of black students in special education programs has been well documented, yet explanations for the overrepresentation are rare. Using a unique sample of U.S.
• Dismantling White Privilege: Pedagogy, Politics, and Whiteness. Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education, Vol. 73
  The author of this book critically interrogated whiteness across contexts, from the experiential level to the different ways in which whiteness is deployed in contemporary cultural politics. The editors and contributors contend that "marking" whiteness is an important step in dismantling white privilege within the context of concerns for equity and social justice.
• Multicultural Competencies: A Guidebook of Practices
  Intended to benefit the entire counseling community, this guidebook demonstrates current multicultural competencies and successful delivery of services across the various professional counseling disciplines. Leading authorities offer concrete direction for effective multicultural counseling and reflect on what they have found to be the best practices in their specialty area.
• Beyond Affirmative Action: Reframing the Context of Higher Education
  Based on extensive interviews with Latino and Latina students and faculty, the author of this book introduced a theory of "multicontextuality" that proposes that many people learn better when teachers emphasize whole systems of knowledge and that education can create its greatest successes by offering and accepting many approaches to teaching and learning.This revolutionary paradigm also addresses why current thinking about academic systems and organizational culture, affirmative action, and diversity must be revised. The author based his groundbreaking proposals upon his own synthesis of findings from anthropological, educational, and psychological studies of how people from various cultures learn, as well as findings from extended interviews he conducted with Latinos and Latinas who pursued graduate degrees and then either became university faculty or chose other careers.
• African American and White Adolescents' Strategies for Managing Cultural Diversity in Predominantly White High Schools
  The authors examined 3 strategies used by 77 African American and 138 White high school students to manage cultural diversity: multicultural, separation, and assimilation strategies. They discuss results in relation to forces supporting adolescents' strategy development and the implications of strategy use for adjustment in predominantly white schools.
• Three Ways To Achieve a More Equitable Representation of Culturally and Linguistically Different Students in GT Programs
  The author of this article indicated that increasing minority teachers in gifted and talented (GT) programs will lead to an increase of minority students in GT programs. The author discussed the ways to recruit and prepare minority teachers, as are multicultural and bilingual options for GT programs.
• Communities and Regions in Germany, Social Studies Grades 3-4. Update 2002
  This instructional package is targeted at students in grades 3 and 4. The package, presented to students as a travelogue, stresses basic map, globe, and geography skills, and presents case studies of communities (cities/towns/villages) across Germany.
• Acculturation of Vietnamese Students Living in or Away from Vietnamese Communities
  A t-test comparison of the acculturation levels of Vietnamese students living in or away from Vietnamese communities found higher overall acculturation for the former than for the latter group and no difference in the Value dimension of acculturation. Age and length of residency in the United States predicted acculturation.
• Building a New Life: The Role of the School in Supporting Refugee Children
  The author investigated refugee children's experiences adjusting to life in England. Interviews and surveys involving refugee and non-refugee children ranging from early to mid-adolescence provided data on: children, war, and persecution; flight to safety; early days in Britain; starting school; the importance of English; coping with the past; and providing support for parents.
• Special Services and Capeverdean Children: Establishing Culturally Relevant Connections
  Although Capeverdean Americans have been a part of the long multicultural history of the United States, little has been written within the professional literature about the special services needs of this cultural group. This article presents some important features of the culture and history of Capeverdeans that are relevant for the provision of culturally sensitive special needs services.
• The social worlds of immigrant youth
  This article applies to all of you who know that your classes are filled or are soon to be filled with minority and immigrant students. In many states and schools districts this is the reality.
• Hispanic Education in the United States: Raices y Alas. Critical Issues of Contemporary American Education
  This book portrays what works in creating better educational opportunities and effective school reform for Hispanic Americans, offering a reflection on the bicultural experience of minority groups in U.S. schools and showing how and why educational reforms must seek to build upon rather than downplay the native culture and language of minority students.
• Disproportionate Representation in Special Education: A Synthesis and Recommendations.
  The authors summarized historical perspectives and existing knowledge about disproportionate representation of minority students in special education. They discussed definitions and extent of disproportionate representation, responses to disproportionate representation and changes in disproportionality and minority student outcomes.
• Globalization, Immigration, and Education: The Research Agenda
  Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco, in this paper, explored a paradigm for understanding immigration and education of immigrant children in the United States in the age of globalization.
• Promoting Multicultural Competence: A Cross-Cultural Mentorship Project
  Describes the Cross-Cultural Mentorship Project (CCMP), designed to increase the multicultural competency of Euro-American graduate counseling students and to serve the needs of Native American students as defined by Native American educators in an urban school district. The CCMP model supports mentors in their multicultural development through cultural consultants, academic coursework, and faculty supervision.
• Organizational Culture and Its Impact on African American Teachers
  Studied how the organizational culture of schools and the cultural values of African American teachers affect the professional experience of these teachers in schools where they are in the minority. Results for seven teachers show that the majority established the work norms, resulting in a uniformity of rules and regulations with which people of color were expected to comply.
• A Call for Change in Multicultural Training at Graduate Schools of Education: Educating To End Oppression and for Social Justice
  Graduate-level multicultural training is important for preparing future teachers to work effectively with diverse students. The author suggests professionals experienced in multiculturalism must revise and refine multicultural training to better address immigrants' diversity issues and issues around sexuality, disability, and spirituality.
• "Critical Perspectives on Project Head Start: Revisioning the Hope and Challenge," edited by Jeanne Ellsworth and Lynda Ames. Book Review
  Describes Ellsworth and Ames' edited book as an eclectic collection including historical, ethnographic, autobiographical, empirical, and self-reflective texts. Maintains that although the book is an important contribution to the literature by placing current practices into historical and social context, thereby leading to a more critical view of the revered program, the work omits an economic view.
• Ethics, Power, and Privilege: Salient Issues in the Development of Multicultural Competencies for Teachers Serving African American Children with Disabilities
  This article addresses educators' ethical responsibility for recognizing the inherent dignity and worth of African American students with disabilities. It opens with a brief overview of multicultural education and continues with a three-pronged model for addressing multicultural competencies: awareness, knowledge, and skills.
• Literacy Development of Students in Urban Schools:Research and Policy
  The issues concerning the teaching for reading in diverse disadvantaged community are important and difficult to deal with. This book is a must read for anyone teaching in an urban setting or preparing teachers to teach reading in diverse communities.
• Homophobia and the Demise of Multicultural Community: Strategies for Change in the Community College
  The author looked at teaching strategies for incorporating texts by sexual minorities into writing and literature classrooms, and for handling blatantly homophobic comments. He argued that such comments work to undercut the idea of a writing community.
• Why Pick on Me? School Exclusion and Black Youth
  This book examines school exclusion in the United Kingdom, particularly the exclusion of black males, using data from the author's experience as an advisory teacher for multicultural education and from four studies of black students. The book highlights school-related determinants of young people's life chances.
• Student Perceptions of Teacher Ethnic Bias: Implications for Teacher Preparation and Staff Development
  The author of this study investigated the perceptions of 2,409 7th-12th graders regarding teacher ethnic bias. Participants comprised three groups: school dropouts, students at risk of dropping out, and a control group of students.
• The Effectiveness of Minority Teachers on Minority Student Success
  The author of this paper examined the shortage of minority teachers and explores the high priority that exists among parents, teachers, and the business community to work toward a diversified teaching force, focusing on the U.S. Hispanic population and investigating whether minority teachers in the classroom can result in minority student success in school.
• They Came to America. Fifth Grade Activity. Schools of California Online Resources for Education (SCORE): Connecting California's Classrooms to the World
  Since the early 1600s, millions of people have came to the United States from all over the world. At that time, Native American Indians inhabited the land, but they too had come from elsewhere 30,000 years earlier.
• "White Privilege": Discrimination and Miscommunication--How It Affects/Effects Underrepresented Minority [Groups] on College Campuses
  The author discusses that thirty years after the enactment of civil rights legislation, the meaning of race has become a problem in the United States, largely because the legacy of centuries of white supremacy lives on. Monolithic white supremacy is over, but in a more concealed way, white power and privilege linger.
• Minority Representation in Special Education
  The authors investigated the overrepresentation of minority students in special education in the U.S. Racial representation along with regional variations and state poverty rates; correlation between racial representation and state poverty rates; and existence of regional variations in minority representation were discussed by the authors.
• Deconstructing Whiteness as Part of a Multicultural Educational Framework: From Theory to Practice
  Based on emerging theoretical work on White racial identity, the authors argue that a central problem of multicultural education involves challenging the universalization of Whiteness. They propose a theoretical framework to advance a multicultural perspective in which the exploration and deconstruction of Whiteness is key.
• Osborne. A Teacher's Handbook
  Osborne, located on the Isle of Wight, is almost entirely Victorian. It was designed, built, and furnished to the royal family's specifications (as a holiday home), and remains largely unaltered since Queen Victoria died in 1901.
• The Role of Empathy in Teaching Culturally Diverse Students: A Qualitative Study of Teachers' Beliefs
  The authors investigated teachers' beliefs about the role of empathy in their effectiveness with culturally diverse students. All respondents had participated in a multicultural professional development course geared to fostering culturally responsive practice.
• Social Inclusion: Would Dickens Approve?
  The author discusses exclusion of ethnic minority students from school in Britain as it reflects the operation of complex differential expectations and assumptions. Data from several studies show that exclusions have been racialized and that black boys are often excluded or disciplined for showing culturally specific behaviors.
• Immigration Then and Now: Old Face, New Story
  This paper is one of the brief practitioner oriented pamphlets called On Points produced by the National Institute for Urban School Improvement (NIUSI). The current wave of immigration is creating such an upheaval, and caught in this emotional jumble are first generation immigrant students.
• Changing Selves: Multicultural Education and the Challenge of New Identities
  The author of this paper noted general challenges to this paradigm and uses data from an ethnographic study of a multiracial South African high school to critique multicultural education's treatment of identity, suggesting alternate theoretical paradigms, research strategies, and pedagogical practices after introducing identity and discussing how it has been used in multicultural education.
• Race, Culture, and Intelligence: An Interview with Asa G. Hilliard III
  In this article, there is an interview with Hilliard, a professor and expert on African culture. Hilliard spoke about the racial and cultural bias of standardized tests, multiculturalism, the concept of race, Afrocentric teaching, Ebonics, recruiting and retaining African-American teachers, and the future classroom.
• Text and Context: Using Multicultural Literature To Help Teacher Education Students Develop Understanding of Self and World
  The authors of this study compared the responses of black and white preservice teachers as they engaged about a young adult novel which addressed racial and sexual diversity. Student teachers used young adult literature with protagonists from diverse backgrounds as one means of coming to understand and value children of all backgrounds.
• Black Teachers and the Struggle against Apartheid: Oral Histories from South Africa
  The author presents the oral histories of three black educators who resisted apartheid and helped raise students' self-esteem despite the demeaning Bantu Education curriculum, experiencing multiple failures and successes in the era between the 1976 Soweto uprising and the end of apartheid in the early 1990s. All three resisted calls for "liberation before education" and fought to provide skills and self-esteem students would need to challenge injustice.
• Field-based Teacher Education for Greater Cultural Sensitivity
  Southeast Missouri State University revised its teacher education program to include field-based experiences in each of its four blocks of courses. Student teachers are placed in rural and urban schools with pupils from various socioeconomic, cultural, racial, and disability groups.
• Race in the College Classroom: Pedagogy and Politics
  Did affirmative action programs solve the problem of race on American college campuses, as several recent books would have us believe? If so, why does talking about race in anything more than a superficial way make so many students uncomfortable? Written by college instructors from many disciplines, this volume of essays takes a bold first step toward a nationwide conversation. Each of the twenty-nine contributors addresses one central question: what are the challenges facing a college professor who believes that teaching responsibly requires an honest and searching examination of race? Professors from the humanities, social sciences, sciences, and education consider topics such as how the classroom environment is structured by race; the temptation to retreat from challenging students when faced with possible reprisals in the form of complaints or negative evaluations; the implications of using standardized evaluations in faculty tenure and promotion when the course subject is intimately connected with race; and the varying ways in which white faculty and faculty of color are impacted by teaching about race.
• Teaching with Folk Stories of the Hmong: An Activity Book. Learning through Folklore Series
  This book is designed as a guide for teaching students about Hmong culture while building appreciation of worldwide cultural diversity. After providing an overview of the distinct history and customs of the Hmong, co-author Dia Cha shares her experiences growing up in Laotian villages, escaping from communist soldiers, living in refugee camps in Thailand, and coming to the United States.
• Special Education Use among the Negev Bedouin Arabs of Israel: a case of minority underrepresentation?
  This study takes the well-documented minority overrepresentation/ disproportionality debate a step forward by asking if, and in what ways, overrepresentation and disproportionality may be seen among a non-American minority group, namely, the Arab citizens of Israel. Statistical evidence suggests that Arab children are more likely than Jewish children to be diagnosed as retarded and to be sent to special education schools.