Issue

No, good teaching is not "simply good teaching." Culture affects how and what we learn. To be effective, teaching must reflect children's adaptation to environmental factors and societal conditions. I believe that children from different cultures perceive and process information differently and that culture also determines children's preferred modes of receiving and expressing information.To be responsive to cultural differences, a teacher should give students opportunities to work with information from their personal cultural frames of reference in ways they find meaningful. Added benefits come through sharing cultures within the group, and by conveying to students the message that teachers are sensitive to their needs.To respond to interactional styles in the students' home community, for example, a teacher might use a choral/response approach reminiscent of that used in African-American churches. An updated technique might involve hip-hop rhymes and rhythms, a catchy mnemonic device popular across the multicultural spectrum.Teaching that is culturally responsive both in input (teachers' presentation styles) and output (teachers' acceptance of students' responses) can make a profound difference to students. America's students have richly varied backgrounds; teachers' sensitive responses to those differences make the teaching "good."—Francesina Jackson is an associate professor of education at North Carolina Central University in Durham, N.C.

The idea that a technique that is successful in promoting learning in one culture will automatically be successful in all cultural settings is fallacious. All young learners grow up in cultural contexts that shape their learning preferences. The cultural conditioning received at home and beyond influences what motivates children to learn and the degree of comfort they feel in a given learning environment.For example, some cultures predispose a child toward competitive learning; others, toward cooperative learning; and still others, toward both. Furthermore, a form of cooperative learning that is successful in one cultural setting—let us say, cross-gender groups—will cause discomfort and conflict in another, where the adults don't want boys and girls to study together. Similarly, inquiry-oriented teaching strategies that promote a critical, open-minded posture toward established knowledge, and which encourage learners to question the claims of authorities such as teachers, textbooks, and media pundits, could be construed as cultural assaults by students and parents who believe that the content of some books (e.g., the Bible and the Koran) should never be questioned.Thus, the merit of a strategy is a function of cultural context, and when considering the appropriateness of a strategy, one should evaluate the cultural preparation of students as well as the cultural setting.—Leonard Davidman is a professor of education at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

To give all children an equal opportunity to be academically successful, teachers must become sensitive to the influence of culture on cognitive style. No longer can teachers adhere to a standard instructional approach. Instead, they must use eclectic teaching strategies to accommodate the culturally fostered learning styles found in a heterogeneous classroom.Today's classroom brings together children whose backgrounds vary considerably in familial interaction and socialization practices. This variation produces differences in the way students relate to and communicate with others and in the way they perceive information. Because of cultural differences, one student may thrive on frequent, direct contact with the instructor, while another may perform quite well without such contact. When students are learning new material, cultural influences may incline one student toward a contextualized structure (i.e., relating information to familiar experiences), whereas another student may be predisposed toward a more decontextualized format.For some students, particularly those from African-American and Hispanic communities where the close interaction of an extended family is common, working in groups—along with constant support from the teacher—may be the optimal classroom environment. Moreover, teachers must capitalize on the cultural strengths students bring to the classroom by devising lessons that allow them to use what their cultures have taught them.—Heraldo Richards is an assistant professor of special education at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

Culture influences learning. The way learners respond to curricular input is shaped by the cultural environment (cultural norms and values) from which the individuals have come. For example, children who have been treated as "conversational partners" with adults, and youngsters trained to be "seen and not heard," behave differently when responding to peers, teachers, and certain types of questions and instructional strategies.Researchers have gathered data suggesting that some learners who, as part of their socialization, were not regularly asked by adults about the color of their clothing ("What color is your sweater?"), names of items ("What's teddy's name?"), and locations of body parts ("Point to your nose") appear to be puzzled by teachers who pose questions with similarly obvious answers ("Where did Jack and Jill go?"). Consequently, these children may be assessed as not "smart."Research data also suggest that culture influences cross-gender interactions. Observations of youngsters from a cultural environment with strict gender roles indicate that cooperative grouping, where the success of a project depends on males' relying on female help, inhibits successful academic outcomes.We are not all the same, neither across nor within cultural lines. While this "revelation" may pose a challenge, to ignore its import and to assert that one kind of teaching is "good" for everyone would be woefully uninformed.—Patricia Davidman is an assistant professor of education at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif.