NIUSI

part of the Education Reform Networks

Resiliency

• "If There Is a Better Intercultural Plan in Any School System in America, I Do Not Know Where It Is": The San Diego City Schools' Intercultural Education Program, 1946-1949
  Explores the history of the San Diego City Schools' attempts at intercultural reform after World War II, noting educators' response to specific student and community needs in the wake of racial, ethnic, and religious tensions. The 3-year intercultural program was one of the first of its kind in California and became a model for other cities to follow.
• A Path to Social Change: Examining Students' Responsibility, Opportunity, and Emotion toward Social Justice
  Investigated college students' beliefs about privileged and oppressed adults' responsibility for the onset/offset of social inequities, emotions linked with their responsibility, and behaviors that should result from responsibility for social equity. Overall, preconceived notions of privilege and oppression can offer an explanation for students' resistance to multicultural discourse.
• An Ethnographic Study of Preservice Teacher Resistance to Multiculturalism: Implications for Teaching
  This paper examines student teachers' resistance to multicultural education, contrasting the expectations of teacher educators, as expressed in the literature, with the perspectives of preservice teachers from a required multiculturalism course.
• Black Teachers and the Struggle against Apartheid: Oral Histories from South Africa
  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.
• Child Development in the Context of Multicultural Pre-School Education
  This study examined the impact of a multicultural preschool curriculum in Slovenia on preschool children's sensitization to cultural differences and understanding of themselves, others, and different cultures. The curriculum was implemented for a 1-month period for 6.6- to 7-year-olds.
• Confessions of a Canon-Loving Multiculturalist. School Reform and the Language Arts Curriculum
  Bitter ideological battles exist over hegemonic control of classroom exchange in high school language arts classes. Discusses the debate over the selection of literature that students will read, noting the influence of the dominant culture, the resistance to inclusion of multicultural literature in these classrooms, and the importance of promoting a multicultural emphasis.
• Critical Multiculturalism, Pedagogy, and Rhetorical Theory: A Negotiation of Recognition
  This paper aims to locate multiculturalisms rhetorically, using contemporary rhetorical theorists with which to do so, and using this theorized location to then discuss the implications of a critical multiculturalist pedagogy within the writing classroom in shaping new discursive space in the Academy.
• Cultural Pluralism: Implications for Educational Practices and Comprehensive School Reform
  To circumvent isolationism, ethnocentrism, and intolerance experienced by culturally diverse students and their parents in U.S. schools, education policies must be effectively documented with methodological endorsement of multicultural education as policy for all students to be personally meaningful, socially relevant, culturally accurate, and educationally sound.
• Curriculum Integration: A Two-Way Street
  Describes curriculum integration and examines a theory of multicultural integration applying it to music education. Offers guidelines for music teachers who attempt to integrate music education with other subject areas: (1) get organized; (2) inform your principal; (3) start small; (4) be proactive; (5) be flexible; and (6) evaluate the effort.
• 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.
• Developing Teaching for Tolerance Programs in Central and Eastern Europe
  Polish society, characterized by closed attitudes toward religious minorities, is poorly prepared for contact with other cultures, yet postcommunist Poland is becoming increasingly heterogeneous. Intercultural education infused throughout the curriculum would help children learn tolerance.
• Dewey, Freire, and a Pedagogy for the Oppressor
  Asserts that cultural diversity and democracy will always be in conflict with each other, examining oppression in a democratic society; an oppressor's view of the world; a pervasive dualism in perspectives; the inadequacy of current efforts to overcome the conflict between the oppressors and the oppressed; traits of oppressors that must be changed; a three-pronged approach to consciousness raising; common themes within this approach; and underlying assumptions. (SM).
• Equity Issues in the Academy: An Afro-Canadian Woman's Perspective
  Contends that the Canadian academy perpetuates dominant staffing of teaching and administrative positions with white males, marginalization of minorities, resistance to reflecting non-white values and experiences in education, and diminished expectations for minority students. The Canadian academy can become a site of empowerment and equity for all if it realistically confronts issues of bias and challenges white privilege.
• Experiences and Beliefs as Predictors of Ethnic Identity and Intergroup Relations
  Factors affecting ethnic identity and other group orientation were assessed in 115 college students from 5 ethnic groups. Ethnic group self-identification, negative and positive interracial experiences, perceptions of racial bias, social support, just-world beliefs, and psychological distress were each associated with various components of ethnic identity and are discussed within a counseling perspective.
• Flexible grouping and student learning in a high-needs school.
  Gives the results of a five year study that used flexible groups to meet the needs of learners identified as having high-needs. Students ability to master skills increased as teachers usage of flexible groups increased.
• High Stakes Down Under for Indigenous Peoples: Learning from Maori Education in New Zealand; An Outsiders Perspective
  This paper examines the education of New Zealand's Maori people, noting historical achievement and enrollment gaps between Maori and non-Maori students. This gap is due to family economics, educational resources, cultural and racial barriers at school, negative school attitudes among older Maori students, and the student achievement testing system.
• Immigrant Children in Our Classrooms: Beyond ESL
  Strategies for supporting immigrant students include providing opportunities for self-expression, ensuring that all students see themselves reflected in the curriculum, providing translation for key events and documents, having teachers and staff that reflect student cultures, maintaining first-language skills, making special efforts to communicate with parents, and training students to support new peers. (TD).
• Impact of Two-Way Immersion on Students' Attitudes toward School and College. ERIC Digest
  This digest reports on a study that examined the impact of participation in a two-way immersion program on the language and achievement outcomes of former program participants and on their current schooling path and college plans. The study explored outcomes for three groups of students: (1) Hispanic students who began the two-way program as English language learners; (2) Hispanic students who began the program as English-only or English-dominant speakers; and (3) European American students who entered the program as monolingual speakers of English.
• Introduction to emotional and behavioral disorders:Recognizing and managing problems in the classroom
  The purpose of this text is to serve as a practical manual to help general education and special education teachers recognize the behavior problems common to some children and youth in their classrooms.
• Kindern das Wort geben: Ein interkulturell-kreativer Arbeitsansatz, aufgezeigt an der Arbeit mit tibetischen Migrantenkindern. (Tell the Children: A Beginning for Intercultural-Creative Work, Focusing on the Children of Tibetan Families.)
  Explains the pedagogical and psychological concepts behind the approach developed by UNESCO that encourages children to express themselves freely on the subject of international understanding and peace in writing and art. Describes a project in which these concepts were applied focusing on a minority dispersed over many parts of the world: children of Tibetan families.
• Multicultural Teacher Education for the 21st Century
  Discusses multicultural preservice teacher education, recommending that preservice programs be more deliberate about preparing white Americans for teaching diverse students because of the increasing division between white teachers and minority students. The paper examines preservice teachers' fear of diversity and resistance to dealing with race and racism, proposing a two-part program for preparing teachers to work with diverse students.
• Nonnative English Speakers: Language Bigotry in English Mainstream Classrooms
  Examines and discusses ways in which both subtle and blatant bigotry toward nonnative speakers of English is present in departments of English. Illustrates how unfounded and inaccurate beliefs about English language proficiency create a hostile climate for a new population of students.
• On Inclusion and the Other Kids:Here's What Research Shows so Far About Inclusion's Effect on Nondisabled Students.
  Inclusion is receiving lots of attention, both in school districts across the country and in the popular media. Most of that attention is focused on how inclusion affects the students with disabilities.
• On Reconceptualizing Continuing Professional Development:A Framework for Planning
  Institutions of higher education, districts and state education agencies must create together the strategies, incentives, and options that will promote educators’ learning of the new practices and perspectives that will generally change this core of practice. Meeting such a challenge requires reconceptualizing both staff and professional development for urban districts where significant numbers of teachers are not licensed, where even licensed teachers leave after a few years and where working conditions are often poor and deteriorating.
• On the Nexus of Race,Disability, and overrepresentation:What Do We Know?Where Do We Go?
  The ethnic overrepresentation of students in special education programs in this country has been a recognized problem for more than 30 years. Simply defined, overrepresentation, or the disproportionate placement of students of a given ethnic group in special education programs, means that the percentage of students from that group in such programs is disproportionally greater than their percentage in the school population as a whole.
• One-Way Streets of Our Culture
  Presents various definitions of culture and contemplates how much a culture can really be shared by those not born into it. Asserts that, in international education, certain concerns must be raised, including: (1) a truly shared meaning depends upon a shared culture; (2) language plays a key role in understanding and developing a culture; and (3) teachers cannot help but support as well as challenge cultural values.
• Other People’s Children: Cultural conflict in the classroom.
  Suggests that many of the academic problems attributed to children of color are actually the result of miscommunication as schools and “other people’s children” struggle with the imbalance of power and the dynamics of inequality.
• Promoting a Global Community through Multicultural Children's Literature
  Children's literature reflecting authentic multiethnic cultures can help young minds recognize the diversity of their families and communities. Books that allow children to see themselves in a positive role give them an opportunity to affirm their identities.
• Public high school dropouts and completers from the common core of data: School Year 2000-01.
  Presents the number and percentage of students dropping out of and completing public school (among states that reported dropouts) for the 2000–01 school year.
• Social and Emotional Distress among American Indian and Alaska Native Students: Research Findings. ERIC Digest
  Many American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth are repeatedly exposed to opportunities to participate in self-destructive and illegal behaviors. This digest examines risk factors associated with four contexts: peers, family, school, and community.
• Sociopedagogy: A Move beyond Multiculturalism toward Stronger Community
  Examines how teacher educators can confront diversity while addressing preservice teachers' individual uniquenesses, describing one university's required course on pluralism. By critically examining their histories, educators learned the importance of going beyond issues of race and ethnicity.
• 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.
• The Development of a Cultural Assessment Tool: Paving the Way to a Culturally Comfortable Classroom
  In a multicultural classroom it is the seemingly small issues, such as classroom informality or interpersonal relationships between male and female students, that can cause misunderstandings and problems. This paper delineates a simple assessment tool to determine what behaviors might be a source of potential discomfort in the classroom.
• The Difficulty with Difference in Teacher Education: Toward a Pedagogy of Compassion
  In a course preparing student teachers for culturally diverse classrooms, passionate debate about racism and affirmative action revealed some students' entrenched resistance to "difficult knowledge" about oppression and white privilege. A pedagogy of compassion builds trust by recognizing the need to learn about other peoples' realities through acknowledging each person's subject position and point of departure.
• The Fight Free Classroom
  Describes implementation of the Fight Free Classroom intervention (designed to decrease fighting and aggressiveness by helping students take ownership of their behavior) in an urban elementary school that included students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). Overall, aggressive acts among students with and without EBD decreased immediately after participation in the intervention.
• Transforming the Multicultural Education of Teachers: Theory, Research, and Practice. Multicultural Education Series
  This book recognizes the important role teacher education programs can play in providing culturally responsive teachers for 21st century public school classrooms. It provides a range of transformative perspectives on the multicultural education of teachers, emphasizing race, racism, anti-racism, and democracy .
• Using Solution-Focused Intervention to Address African American Male Overrepresentation in Special Education: A Case Study.
  Highlights the problem of overrepresentation of African American males in special education. Case example; Two phases of intervention to address aggression and unhappiness of an African American male; Outcome of intervention.
• What Helps Students of Color Succeed? Resiliency Factors for Students Enrolled in Multicultural Educators Programs
  This study investigated factors that helped students of color enrolled in multicultural educator programs succeed academically, focusing on resiliency factors that supported their academic success (defined as college graduation or current enrollment at the sophomore level or higher). First an initial focus group with several minority students verified whether resilience factors from prior research were sufficient.
• 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.