Cultural Proficiency and Accelerating Student Achievement for the

21st Century

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Session 3

What and Why of Cultural Proficiency

Session 3 Objectives• Define Culture, Cultural

Proficiency, and Education That is Multicultural.

• List the reasons why it is important to become culturally proficient as an educator.

• Understand what we know about school systems who are successfully closing the achievement gap.

• Understand the points along the Cultural Proficiency Continuum.

• Analyze where their school system or school is along the Continuum regarding specific policies or practices.

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Write a definition for each…

• Culture• Education That is Multicultural• Cultural Proficiency

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CULTURE MATTERS Culture is the lens through which we view

the world. Culture does not determine ability, but it shapes how it is processed and expressed. Students do not enter schools as empty vessels.

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Culture is …

Elements of Culture1.Values and beliefs2.Communication patterns3.Social relationships a set of

learned behaviors, traditions, beliefs, and a way of life created by a group of people.

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ELEMENTS OF CULTURE (CONT’D)

4. Diet and food preparation5. Dress and other body decorations6. Religion, religious practices7. Family structure8. Traditions and customs9. View of time10. Recreation, leisure

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Enduring Understanding: Race and Culture exert a powerful influence on teaching and

learning. Essential Questions:

1. How do awareness, knowledge, and understanding of one’s own cultural identity promote effective learning and teaching?

2. How do awareness, knowledge, and understanding of the cultural identity of students promote effective learning and teaching?

3. How can educators establish learning environments that are conscious of race and culture to ensure implementation of culturally relevant instruction?

4. How do educators become culturally proficient?

7Harford County Public Schools - Office of Equity and Cultural Proficiency

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Multiculturalism ultimately is a way of thinking. It’s thinking about concepts from different people’s vantage points. It’s recognizing other perspectives, but it’s more than recognition. It’s caring and taking action to make our society more just and more humane.

…is a continuous, integrated, multiethnic, multidisciplinary process for educating all students about diversity and commonality.

EDUCATION THAT IS MULTICULTURAL…

…prepares students to live, learn, interact, and work creatively in an interdependent global society by fostering mutual respect and appreciation.

…is a process which is complemented by community and parent involvement in support of multicultural initiatives.

Diversity factors include, but are not limited to race, ethnicity, region, religion, gender, language, socio-economic status, age and physical ability.

Cultural proficiency is …

A mind set, a way of being, a worldview, a paradigm

shift for some.

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Cultural proficiency is …

The use of specific tools for effectively describing, responding to, and

planning for issues that emerge in diverse environments.

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Cultural proficiency is …

Policies and practices at the organizational level and values and behaviors of the leader that enable effective cross-cultural interactions

among students, teachers, administrators, and community.

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Inside-Out

The goal of cultural proficiency inquiry is viewing change as an “inside-out” process in which one becomes aware of unintended or unconscious decisions, actions, and attitudes that impede the learning of children and youth, and then systematically dismantle the barriers, replacing them with culturally proficient policies, practices, and behaviors.

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A culturally proficient teacher recognizes what the learner brings to the instructional content and acknowledges those contributions and perspectives in two ways: - How the instructional material is delivered- How the instructor engages with the learners

Culturally proficient instructors open the minds and hearts of learners, affirming that differences are not deficits.

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Inclusion NOT Exclusion

Addition NOT Subtraction

Asset NOT Deficit

Same standards Separate standardsof excellence NOT of excellence for

for all different groupsDiversity ininstructional NOT

approach

Acceleration NOT Remediation

Created,negotiated Assumed

or discovered Common GroundCommon Ground

NOT

Operational PrinciplesFor Education

That Is Multicultural

"one style fits all" instruction

Created by Dr. Jacqueline BrownMarch 2001 HCPSS

A number of shifts have taken place in society giving rise to a cultural proficiency imperative:

• Shifting population demographics

• Shifting in a world or global economy

• Shifting the social integration and interaction paradigm

• Shifting the goal from assimilation to biculturalism

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ETM Regulation COMAR

13A.04.05.01-.04• To accelerate academic

achievement

• To increase cultural proficiency

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Find your assigned section and summarize its major

components to share with other groups:

Curriculum Instruction Staff Development Instructional

Resources17

Report of the Task Force on the Education of Maryland’s

African American Males

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Data Collection and Analysis

… is critical to raising people’s awareness that we are not serving some of our student groups. Without the data, we can get caught in the “opinion quicksand” and “blame game” and never get on with the business of realigning systems and subsystems so that all students receive the educational opportunities promised to them.

For change to be effective, you must begin where you and your school are, not where you want yourself or the school to be.

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Review and analyze for disproportionality the county

data on …

• MSA• HSA

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Education Access MeasuresIn addition to standardized testing, consider these educational access measures:

• Student Attendance• Student Suspensions• Student Dropout and Expulsion

Rates• Student Enrollment in Special

Programs– Remedial Programs– Special Education Programs– Gifted and Talented Programs– Honors and Advanced Placement

Courses– Advancement Via Individual

Determination (AVID) and International Baccalaureate (IB) Programs

Additional High School Indicators

• Enrollment and Successful Completion of Algebra I

• Accumulation of High School Credits

• Percent of Students Receiving D or E

• Graduation Rates• College Preparation and

Entrance Indicators• Postgraduate Surveys

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Reflections on Achievement Conversations• How are conversations about

learners framed where you work?

• Do you and your colleagues talk in terms of enabling learners?

• Does the conversation ever shift to external reasons why they don’t learn (e.g., culture, socioeconomic status, or level of education)?

• Think back to a time when you were engaged in conversation with colleagues that focused on why learners were not performing well.

• Was the focus on the time that the learners were not in the classroom (e.g., sociocultural influences), or was the focus on the time spent with the instructors?

• Do you tend to gravitate to those things over which you have minimal control or influence or to those that are in your sphere of influence?

• Are you taking control of the situation?

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Reasons for the GapFrom independent research of Hale, Hilliard, Kuykendall

• Teaching and learning in our schools are often incongruent with the learning style of students at risk.

• The lack of trust between schools and home/community has a negative impact on student achievement.

• Students have just begun to understand their own culture when they have to enter school and function in a learning environment that does not reflect their culture.

• Institutional racism has a strong subliminal effect on the aspirations and academic success of low achieving students.

• In schools with high percentages of African-American and poor students, there is a tendency for high mobility of the professional staff.

• Sometimes, teachers unintentionally convey lower expectations for minority and low-income students.

• African-American students tend to reject the “goods” offered by our schools, citing, “It is not about us.”

• African-American students often exhibit belligerent behavior towards school in which they feel excluded.

• Linguistic differences interfere with reading and learning.

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Equity vs. Equality

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Equality:All individuals receive equal treatment.

Equity:Everyone gets what he/she needs in order to reach the same goals.

Critical Factors Necessary to Close the Racial Achievement Gap

• Passion – the level of connectedness educators bring to anti-racism work and to district, school, or classroom equity transformation. One’s passion must be strong enough to overwhelm institutional inertia, resistance against change, and the system’s resilience or its desire to maintain the status quo.

• Practice – the essential individual and institutional actions taken to effectively educate every student to his or her full potential. One must gain knowledge and use research-based practices which are effective with students of color.

• Persistence – the willingness of a school system to “stick with it” despite slow results, political pressure, new ideas, and systemic inertia or resistance to change. A persistent school system institutionalizes real school change with effective leadership, classroom implementation, and community partnerships.

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WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT SYSTEMS WHO ARE

CLOSING THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP?

• They make NO EXCUSES. Everybody takes RESPONSIBILITY for student learning.

• They do not leave anything about TEACHING and LEARNING to chance.

• They know that GOOD TEACHERS matter more than anything else.

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An inclusive school is one in which everyone belongs, is accepted, supports, and is supported by, his or her

peers and other members of the school community in the course of having his or her educational needs met.

In an effective, inclusive school, staff members, students, and parents …

Believe that all children belong as part of the school community

Emphasize learning for all students

Provide equal opportunities for all students

Equally value all persons

View each person as a unique individual

Learn from and about people with diverse characteristics

Work together in a problem solving organization

Share the responsibility for all students

Self Reflection

Please complete the Cultural Proficiency

Receptivity Scale

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The Cultural Proficiency Tools

The Continuum– Language for describing both healthy and non-productive

policies, practices and individual behaviorsThe Essential Elements

– Behavioral standards for measuring and planning for growth toward cultural proficiency

The Guiding Principles– Underlying values of the approach

The Barriers– Caveats that assist in responding effectively to resistance

to change

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The Conceptual Framework for

Culturally Proficient Practices

See the difference, make it wrong.

See the difference,

stomp it out.

See the

difference, understand

the difference

that difference

makes.

See the difference, act as if

you don’t.

See the difference,

respond inadequately

.

See the difference, respond positively

and affirmatively

.

Cultural Incapacity

Cultural Destructiveness

Cultural Blindness Cultural

Precompetence

Cultural Competence Cultural

ProficiencyCultural

Incapacity

Cultural Destructiveness

Cultural Blindness Cultural

Precompetence

Cultural Competence Cultural

Proficiency

Cultural Proficiency Continuum

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Cultural Destructiveness

Examples• Genocide or Ethnocide• Shun/Avoid certain

curriculum topics

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Using one’s power to eliminate the culture of another.

“See the difference; stomp it out.”

Cultural Incapacity“See the difference; make it wrong.”

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Believing in the superiority of one’s own culture and behaving in ways that disempower another’s

culture.

Examples• Lowered expectations• Expecting “others” to change: My way or

the highway.

Examples• Discomfort in noting difference• Beliefs/actions that assume world is fair

and achievement is based on merit

Acting as if cultural differences do not matter or as if there are not differences

among/between cultures.

“See the difference; act like you don’t.”

Cultural Blindness

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Cultural Pre-Competence

“See the difference; respond to it inappropriately.”

Recognizing the limitations of one’s skills or an organization's practices when interacting with

other cultural groups.

Examples• Delegate diversity work to others, to a committee• Quick fix, packaged short-term programs

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Examples• Advocacy• On-going education of self

and others

Interacting with others using the five essential elements of cultural proficiency as the standard for

behavior and practice.

“See the difference; understand the difference that difference makes.”

Cultural Competence

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Examples• Interdependence• Personal change and transformation

Esteem culture; knowing how to learn about organizational culture; interacting effectively in a

variety of cultural groups.

“See the difference; respond positively. Engage and adapt.”

Cultural Proficiency

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Using the Cultural Proficiency Continuum definitions,

categorize the quotes along the Continuum.

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• The School System Policies• Your School

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“What Ought to Be…”

… listening… requires not only open eyes and ears, but open hearts and minds. We do not really see through our eyes or hear through our ears, but through our beliefs...

-Lisa Delpit

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“What Ought to Be…”

It is not easy, but it is the only way to learn what it might feel like to be someone else and the only way to start the dialogue.

-Lisa Delpit

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Embracing Diversity• Embracing diversity encompasses acceptance and respect. It

means understanding that each individual is unique, and recognizing our individual differences.

• These can be along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies. It is the exploration of these differences in a safe, positive, and nurturing environment.

• It is about understanding each other and moving beyond simple tolerance to embracing and celebrating the rich dimensions of diversity contained within each individual.

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Respond by e-mail your reflection on where you are

personally on the Continuum and how you might change your beliefs or practices to

move further along the Continuum.

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Closing Thought ….

People fail to get along because they fear each other.

They fear each other because they don’t know each other.

They don’t know each other because they haven’t properly communicated with each other.

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Let us, as educators, break this cycle, andfoster understanding and harmony amongall people of our world.