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Cultural Competence for Educators

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To Help Educators Close Achievement Gaps

American classrooms are becoming increasingly diverse. As NEA President Dennis Van Roekel has noted, "Educators with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes to value the diversity among students will contribute to an educational system designed to serve all students well."

Cultural competence is a key factor in enabling educators to be effective with students from cultures other than their own.

Cultural competence is having an awareness of one's own cultural identity and views about difference, and the ability to learn and build on the varying cultural and community norms of students and their families. It is the ability to understand the within-group differences that make each student unique, while celebrating the between-group variations that make our country a tapestry. This understanding informs and expands teaching practices in the culturally competent educator's classroom.

The "Cultural Competence: What Does it Mean for Educators?" video, an interview with six educational scholars, explains why cultural competence is a salient issue in American public education today. These scholars emphasize the need for educators to provide an environment of respect and reciprocity of ideas. They illustrate how the ability for educators to learn how to teach students from different backgrounds is critical to the success of the educational system.

The researchers presented in this video offer their insights into the impact cultural competence can have on closing achievement gaps.

They recognize how student outcomes can be improved by incorporating racial and ethnic minority contributions in curriculum and diversifying pedagogical practices. They see cultural competence as both a moral and ethical responsibility to create a welcoming environment for students to succeed. The impact of having educators who have the ability to challenge and motivate diverse student populations can dramatically improve our educational system and student outcomes.

Useful Links:

"Cultural & Global Competence: CULTURAL COMPETENCE: The Nuts & Bolts of Diversity & Inclusion"
by Mercedes Martin and Billy Vaughn
For a general view of cultural competence that is common non-educational professionals, this article offers a working definition of cultural competence, characterizes its components, and describes its utility in diversity education.

Communicating Cross-Culturally: What Teachers Should Know
by Yvonne Pratt-Johnson
A brief and effective look at the opportunities for communicating with diverse students and their families that goes beyond bridging language differences to truly understanding where students are coming from.

"Using Multicultural Literature in Gifted Education Classrooms"
by Donna Y. Ford, Tyrone C. Howard, and J. John Harris III
In a discussion of identifying appropriate multicultural materials for gifted minority students and for exposing white students to diversity concepts and issues, these authors also reference James Banks' four-level model for integrating culturally competent material into the curriculum.

Culturally Competent Schools: Guidelines for Secondary School Principals
by Mary Beth Klotz
Do you think cultural competence is only for the primary grades? Take a look at this guidance for incorporating culturally competent strategies for a school-wide approach to student success.

Teaching Tolerance:
Sonia Nieto. Teaching Diverse Students Initiative
These NEA-supported videos are of noted teacher preparation and cultural competence scholar, Sonia Nieto, produced as part of a broader professional development effort sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

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American classrooms are becoming increasingly diverse. As NEA President Dennis Van Roekel has noted, "Educators with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes to value the diversity among students will contribute to an educational system designed to serve all students well." Cultural competence is a key factor in enabling educators to be effective with students from cultures other than their own.

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Becoming a Culturally Responsive Teacher

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Becoming a Culturally Responsive Teacher

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Becoming a Culturally Responsive Teacher

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For Cross-Culture Collaboration

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The Multicultural Guide or Toolkit provides a foundation for improving relationships between individuals and groups of diverse backgrounds.

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What Teachers Should Know

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The Internet TESLJournal Yvonne Pratt-Johnson
prattjoy [at] stjohns.edu
St. John's University (Queens, New York, USA)

This article looks at the need for teachers to be culturally responsive and competent as schools and classrooms become increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse. It highlights five points of cultural difference with which all teachers should be aware when teaching students of diverse backgrounds.

Introduction

English language learners (ELLs) are the fastest growing group of students in the United States today (Spellings, 2005). Today, one out of every nine students is learning English as a second language. That's about 5.4 million children-almost the population of Arizona, or Maryland, or Tennessee (Spellings, 2005). If this trend continues, current projections indicate that by the year 2030, 40% of all school-aged children in the United States will be speakers of a first language other than English (Duffey, 2004). Teacher demands and expectations today are far greater than they have ever been. But are classroom teachers adequately prepared to teach and interact with this culturally and linguistically diverse population? In classrooms where what is communicated, practiced, and perceived greatly affect and impact students, it is imperative that teachers learn how to effectively communicate cross-culturally in such diverse contexts.

If teachers are to become effective cross-cultural communicators, it is essential to understand the role that culture plays within the multi-cultural school setting. Lustig and Koester (2003) define culture as "a learned set of shared interpretations about beliefs, values, and norms, which affect the behaviors of a relatively large group of people." Similarly, Samovar and Porter (1991) explain culture as a medium that touches and alters all aspects of human life, including personality, how people express themselves (which includes displays of emotion), the way they think, how they move, and how problems are solved. Indeed, culture goes far beyond the climate, food, and clothing of a student's native country.

Culture, undoubtedly, is complex. It is multi-layered and multifaceted. Indeed, some have likened it to an iceberg of which only the top is visible while a massive part remains unobservable below the surface of the water. Others have compared culture to an onion with its many layers (Hofstede, 1991). As one layer is peeled, another layer lies beneath, waiting to be discovered. Both metaphors powerfully address the complexity of culture. In these complexities lies the challenge that teachers of ELLs face.

Cultural Competence in the Classroom

Competence in cross-cultural communication requires diving below the surface to see the rest of the iceberg, and it involves onion peeling, too: acquiring a corpus of deeper cultural information that might affect how a teacher instructs and how a student learns. While the iceberg and onion metaphors speak to the complex nature of culture, they also evoke an array of feelings. Running into an iceberg can cause an unexpected jolt, and an onion, as it is peeled, can cause the eyes to tear; likewise--to go from metaphor to analogy--the process of becoming culturally competent also comes with new challenges and experiences that might, initially at least, surprise, shock, or even offend. In the classroom, being culturally competent also involves an understanding of how cultures differ under the surface and how cultures respond differently to similar situations.

Acquiring cultural competence is a gradual process. It is achieved only after many observations, experiences, and interactions in the classroom and playground, with parents and with peers. However, the process can begin with the knowledge and understanding of six basic cultural differences that teachers are likely to encounter in the culturally diverse classroom. Familiarity with these differences will begin to aid teachers in understanding the complexity of teaching diverse groups of students.

1. Ways of Knowing

How do cultures come to acquire information? In some cultures, information is gathered through intensive research in libraries and on the Internet--for example, in the United States. These cultures appreciate evidence that can be measured and documented through such media.

On the other hand, other cultures acquire information through "non-academic" sources--for example, through elders, nature, spirits, or symbols. Some cultures do not have the same quantity and quality of experience with books or similar forms of research. These cultures may place greater value on information and knowledge acquired through oral tradition.

2. Ways of Solving Problems

Cultures have different ways of solving problems. It is surprising that given the same set of problems and circumstances, cultures can arrive at very different solutions. Cultures reason differently and arrive at solutions based on their distinctive values, philosophy and beliefs. One example is the variety of responses that members of different cultures provide to the following question:

Suppose you are on a boat with your mother, your spouse and your child. Suddenly, the boat begins to sink. You determine that you can only save one of the other passengers. Whom do you save?

According to survey results, 60% of Americans save their spouse, 40% save their children. The reasons typically offered run along these lines:

Save Spouse: "My spouse is my partner for life and I can have more children.";

Save Child: "Children represent the future, so it is vital to protect them first. Probably, my spouse would support this decision."

However, among Asian cultures, or Americans of recent Asian descent, nearly 100% of respondents state that they would save the mother. The rationale I have heard offered is this:

Save Mother: "My mother gave me life; I owe her my life. I can marry again; I can have more children, but I cannot replace my mother or otherwise repay the debt I owe her." (Texin, 2002).

3. Ways of Communicating Non-verbally

Cultures have different ways of communicating non-verbally, and it is crucial for teachers to be aware of these differences. In a class that is culturally diverse, any or all of the following might be observed in the classroom: children who will not make direct eye contact when talking to a teacher, because to do so would show lack of respect in their culture; children who smile not because they are happy but because they are embarrassed or do not understand and are afraid to ask questions; others who rarely smile, such as students from Korea: "In Korean culture, smiling signals shallowness and thoughtlessness. The Korean attitude toward smiling is expressed in the proverb, 'the man who smiles a lot is not a real man'" (Dresser, 1996).

When teachers begin to recognize that cultures have different ways of communicating non-verbally, they will understand their ELL students better and be less likely to be offended or to misinterpret non-verbal clues to emotional, cognitive, or attitudinal states.

4. Ways of Learning

Generally speaking, different cultures also learn in different ways. In the United States students often work in groups and do collaborative activities in which they learn from one another. Classrooms in such cases can be student-centered, with the teacher as facilitator. In some cultures, however, the teacher is always the center of class activities, the sole authority figure. Sometimes, students do not even dare to ask questions, as to do so would challenge the teacher's authority. There are no collaborative activities in such classrooms, and students are required to memorize pages and pages of information that they subsequently restate on written tests.

5. Ways of Dealing with Conflict

Conflict is a fact of life. It is in observing how people deal with and react to conflicts that we see clear differences between cultures. Some cultures view conflict as a positive thing, while others view it as something to be avoided. In the United States, conflict is not usually desirable; nonetheless, conventional wisdom in this country encourages individuals to deal directly with conflicts when they do arise. In fact, face-to-face encounters are usually suggested as the way to work through whatever problems exist.

By contrast, in many Asian countries, open conflict is experienced as embarrassing or demeaning. As a rule, these cultures hold that differences are best worked out quietly. Thus, written exchanges might be preferred over face-to-face encounters as a means of conflict resolution (Dupraw and Axner, 1997).

6. Ways of Using Symbols

In the multicultural school setting, symbols that are unique to various cultures should be correctly understood and interpreted. Otherwise, problems can arise. One case in point occurred in an elementary school in New York City. A math teacher asked her students to embellish their math portfolios by drawing pictures to accompany them. She was incensed when she saw her young student from India drawing what she thought was a swastika. Furious, she took the student's "artwork" and ripped it in half in front of the whole class! Subsequently, she learned from another teacher at the school, a Hindu, that what had looked to her like a swastika was actually a sacred symbol of wisdom that Hindus throughout the world have used for thousands of years!

Discussion

The changing demographics of classrooms in the United States make it incumbent upon us as teachers to know our students' cultures. In order to improve our cross-cultural interactions, teachers must learn not just the basic facts but even important nuances of their students' cultures (Hodgkinson, 1991). There are many challenges in achieving cross-cultural communication. However, the more teachers learn about their students of diverse backgrounds, the better they become as cross-cultural communicators and the more likely they will be to contribute to optimal student learning outcomes. Banks concurs: "If teachers are to increase learning opportunities for all students, they must be knowledgeable about the social and cultural contexts of teaching and learning" (Banks et al., 2001).

Yet cultural contexts are not easy to understand. In fact, such an understanding can often be reached only if teachers begin by practicing cross-cultural communication. The following are suggestions that teachers might find useful in increasing their competence in cross-cultural communication, thus allowing them to learn from culturally diverse members of the school community:

Build relationships with students and their parents -- Relationships built on trust go a long way. Students must feel that they belong and are accepted. Politeness, friendliness, kindness, fairness, respect and empathy are important factors in establishing a sound teacher-student relationship.

Listen empathetically -- Teachers must listen actively and carefully to their students, putting themselves in their students' places and learning to read between cultural lines. Teachers might also listen to their students' conversations with their classmates. The things they talk about and ask teachers to discuss and explain are the areas that concern them the most.

Look for cultural interpreters in school or in the community who can serve as resources in assisting teachers to add to their cultural funds of knowledge. Teachers can ask such interpreters cultural questions and share with them their cultural concerns.

Take advantage of available resources: books, articles, films, music, audio recordings, and a variety of material from the Internet that might aid teachers in learning more about their students' cultures.

Conclusion

In the United States, with so much cultural mixing, teachers no longer have a choice as to whether they want to interact with diversity or not. They must become cross-culturally competent. To become cross-culturally competent in the classroom teachers must understand important ways in which cultures differ and how this affects the ways in which their students behave. Through studying the cultural backgrounds of their students, teachers can learn to avoid some of the problems that surface each day.

Living in a global society, teachers are called upon to instruct and work with students with very different ethnicities and beliefs from those to which they have been accustomed. Therefore, it is vital that teachers continuously educate themselves, discovering all that they can about their students and their backgrounds. In the process of developing their cultural knowledge and cross-cultural communication skills, the five cross-cultural points of comparison and the techniques for expanding cultural knowledge discussed above can provide important guidelines for teachers. Ultimately, such an approach should help teachers to understand and respect diverse students and to guide these students more effectively toward academic and personal success and fulfillment.

References

Banks, J. A., Cookson, P., Gay, G., Hawley, W. D., Irvine, J. J., Nieto, S., et al. (2001). Diversity within unity: Essential principles for teaching and learning in a multicultural society. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(3), 196-202.

Dreser, Norine (1996). Multicultural matters. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Duffey, A. (2004). The bilingual classroom. Retrieved September 15, 2005, from http://www.64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:ePOSInl4cncJ:www.ecbea.org/publications/bilingual

Dupraw, M. and Axner, M. (1997)
http://www.wwcd.org/action/ampu/crosscult.html

Hofstede, G. (1991). Culture and organizations. Software of the mind. London, UK: McGraw Hill.

Lustig, M. W., and Koester, J. (2003). Intercultural competence: Interpersonal communication across cultures. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Samovar, L.A., and Porter, R. E. (1991). Communication between cultures. California: Wadsworth.

Spellings, Margaret. "From Essential Elements to Effective Practice." Address at the fourth annual "Celebrate Our Rising Stars Summit" sponsored by the Department's Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA). Washington, D.C. 1 Dec. 2005. http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/2005/12/12012005.html

Texin, T. (2002). Survey: Who Do You Save? Retrieved: November 9, 2005. http://www.i18nguy.com/adventures/whotosave.html

The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. XII, No. 2, February 2006
http://iteslj.org/ http://iteslj.org/Articles/Pratt-Johnson-CrossCultural.html

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Communicating Cross-Culturally: What Teachers Should Know

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How teachers can be more culturally responsive and competent in the classroom. Not only ESL teachers, but all teachers can benefit from reading this article.

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Empowering Educators Through Cultural Competence

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Empowering Educators Through Cultural Competence

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By: Jose' Vilson

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The act of listening is perhaps the most underrated skill there is in education. As teachers, we are often asked to "do" a lot more than necessary: memorize standards, plan lessons, prepare for various assessments, call homes, provide a warm environment for our students (and visitors), attend faculty meetings with varying effectiveness and relevance, grade mounds of papers, and take what little time we have left to eat and sleep, usually less than we should.

Yet, with the laundry list of things that teachers do, check for, and assess, we might be better off staying still and letting students tell us more about what they need.

This is especially crucial in situations where we may or may not share similar backgrounds with the students we teach. We've known for decades that building relationships is a central part of our work, but this has even larger implications when we work with disadvantaged students. The teacher-student relationship has so many subtle nuances across race, gender, and class lines that opening our eyes to these nuances would make us better educators. Time and again, we see a growing number of educators willing to forgo the need to jump directly into teaching, educators who are more into getting to know the students.

After all, we shouldn't be preparing to teach content or the students we imagine might be there, but rather the students in front of us.

We can do this by taking up some of the skills we wish to impart on our own students. In our classrooms, however, that's not enough. For excellence, we may need to switch the way we talk to and about students. Here are some workable strategies that I've used and observed.

Build Relationships, But as a Teacher First

Everyone has a different approach to classroom management. Some don't smile until December, if ever. Others can't help but smile and laugh throughout the year. Some impart their wisdom with diatribes and speeches, while others know how to quietly move about the room and make their presence felt. The common thread in all of those cases is students understanding that the teacher cares and has a specific way of showing that he or she cares. A few teachers have said, "The student might not be able to read, but they can read you." That's powerful in the context of schools where teachers don't have the same cultural background as the students. When teachers have a passion for the students in front of them, and not just for the subject they're teaching, everyone wins.

This also means, simultaneously, that teachers shouldn't seek to create friendships in the normal sense. Many of my students would shake their heads at other teachers who tried to create friendships with them, saying they wanted a teacher, not another friend. While this might seem counterintuitive to progressive education (whatever that means), we must recognize that many students find comfort in having someone who provides stability and structure. Speaking of which. . .

Create a Fair and Equitable Environment

Currently, we've seen a surge of research that shows how real the school-to-prison pipeline has gotten. Black girls, for instance, face suspension at three times the rate of white girls, and black boys face suspension at six times the rate of white boys in NYC and Boston schools. With harsher systemic punishment doled out in our most vulnerable places, we need to recognize that classrooms are often the first place where students see inequity, and it's usually not in the resources but in their treatment. We can create rules with students and believe in restorative justice, but until we reflect on the ways that we interact with students in their weakest moments, we will continue to perpetuate inequity.

For instance, when a student comes in late, do we first ask why they're late or do we yell and banter about their lateness? Do we address individual students' weaknesses in front of the entire class or seek to have private conversations first? Do we try to build a community of learners or do we harshly deny student agency? There are ways to be strict without being inhumane, but too often, some of us think quiet is the ultimate goal by any means necessary. Instead, we should strive to understand the students individually and develop a common sense of purpose for them collectively.

Ask Questions as a Form of Disarming

Too often, we come into situation with inherent biases that we might not recognize. Works from Peggy McIntosh, such as "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack (PDF 18KB), and Project Implicit underline the need to work against some of our deeply-held beliefs. In the classroom, we need to recognize the privileges we bring and ask better questions. Humility in some aspects can make us more attuned to the needs of all students, but especially underserved students. When we ask good, honest questions of our students in the moments when we as teachers don't understand something, we seem more genuine.

Earlier in my career, for example, I thought I knew all about my students, so when I saw someone sleeping in class, I would attribute that to laziness or apathy. One day, we called his parent into school to find out what was going on and why this student couldn't pay attention. As it turned out, his mother worked weird factory shifts, from 3PM to midnight, often leaving him with little supervision. One night, he accidentally left his keys inside his apartment, which meant he was locked out until she got home. Every teacher needs that sort of humility, even if we share a cultural background, because it can be easy to forget that we teach students.

After that experience, I tend to ask more than I assume, which should be a general rule of thumb for all teachers. Those with even less information about the students should ask more questions. Some of our most intelligent civil rights organizations recently joined forces to make recommendations to President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan about the future of education. The one that stuck out the most for me was the idea of cultural competence as professional competence. In many circles, this matters more than our current debates on testing, Common Core, and school funding. For our students, the person who they see as the beacon of hope or the agent of their oppression (and everything in between) is their teacher. Excellent educators embrace this for themselves and for all of their students.

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Empowering Educators Through Cultural Competence | Edutopia

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The act of listening is perhaps the most underrated skill there is in education. As teachers, we are often asked to "do" a lot more than necessary: memorize standards, plan lessons, prepare for various assessments, call homes, provide a warm environment for our students (and visitors), attend faculty meetings with varying effectiveness and relevance, grade mounds of papers, and take what little time we have left to eat and sleep, usually less than we should.

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Steps to a Culturally Responsive Classroom Management

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Steps to a Culturally Responsive Classroom Management

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Many of the questions we receive are from educators seeking advice about how to respond when someone-a student, a colleague, even a parent-uses biased language or stereotypes in school.

This guide is our response. It's for educators who want to develop the skills to speak up themselves and who want to help their students ﬁnd the courage to speak up too.

This guide is for the adults in the school. It offers advice about how to respond to remarks made by students and by other adults and gives guidance for helping students learn to speak up as well. We believe that modeling the kind of behavior we want from students is one of the most effective ways of teaching it.

Use the accompanying pocket guide when faced with biased language and situations:

1. Print front and back

2. Cut along the dotted lines

3. Fold once along the center lengthwise

4. Fold the right and left blocks with the words "INTERRUPT" and "ECHO" inward

5. Fold in half so that "SPEAK UP AT SCHOOL" appears on the front

6. Pocket and reference often

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Many of the questions we receive are from educators seeking advice about how to respond when someone-a student, a colleague, even a parent-uses biased language or stereotypes in school. This guide is our response. It's for educators who want to develop the skills to speak up themselves and who want to help their students ﬁnd the courage to speak up too.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching Resources and Lessons

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Culturally Responsive Teaching Resources and Lessons

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George Lucas Educational Foundation

Find and share resources and explore strategies to engage students by connecting to and honoring their cultures, experiences, and backgrounds.

Sort by:

Understanding students' lives can help teachers foster a sense of belonging and ensure that all students feel respected and challenged.

A primer on the impact of implicit biases in schools and how they can be expressed by students and faculty.

Five ways teachers can celebrate and extend the linguistic expertise of young students who speak two or more languages.

Influenced by the pandemic and social unrest, two teachers recommend books to read this summer on topics like wrestling with loss, addressing inequity, and recharging for the school year ahead.

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Find and share resources and explore strategies to engage students by connecting to and honoring their cultures, experiences, and backgrounds.

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Mix It Up at Lunch Day is an international campaign that encourages students to identify, question and cross social boundaries. Schools can register to host a Mix It Up event on any day of the year!

Students consistently identify the cafeteria as a place in their school where divisions are clearly-and harshly-drawn. So we ask students to move out of their comfort zones and connect with someone new over lunch. It's a simple act with profound implications that we encourage educators to include in year-round efforts to promote healthy, welcoming school environments. Studies have shown that interactions across group lines can help reduce prejudice. When students interact with those who are different from them, biases and misperceptions can fall away.

What Is Mix? | Adults What Is Mix? | Kids

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Mix It Up at Lunch Day is an international campaign that encourages students to identify, question and cross social boundaries. Schools can register to host a Mix It Up event on any day of the year! Students consistently identify the cafeteria as a place in their school where divisions are clearly-and harshly-drawn.

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Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education

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Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education

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Gloria Landson-Billings & William F. Tate IV - University of Wisconsin

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Transitioning from a Model of Cultural Competency toward an Inclusive Pedagogy of “Racial Competency” Using Critical Race Theory

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Transitioning from a Model of Cultural Competency toward an Inclusive Pedagogy of “Racial Competency” Using Critical Race Theory

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Erica L. Campbell

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Does Race Matter?: How High School Teachers Perceive Students’ Ability and Behavior

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Does Race Matter?: How High School Teachers Perceive Students’ Ability and Behavior

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Mara Martinez

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Webinars for Educators

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Learning for Justice webinars offer helpful guidance and great ideas from our experienced teaching and learning specialists and from innovative educators in the Learning for Justice community. Watch these FREE on-demand webinars at your own pace and share them with colleagues!