Cultural Diversity and Early Education Report of a Workshop (1994) / Chapter Skim
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1 Cultural Contexts for Learning
1 Cultural Contexts for Learning
Pages 1-9
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The current influx of new immigrant groups, some of whom also have relatively high rates of birth, will fuel continued growth in the number of students who enter school with little or no English proficiency and whose cultural and educational backgrounds may not correspond to the norms and expectations they encounter when they start formal schooling. THE CHALLENGE OF CULTURAL DIVERSITY These trends pose new opportunities, but also serious challenges, to U.S.
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These inequities in different children's prospects for school success are a serious affront to the value that Americans place on equal opportunity and a grave problem for the future well-being of the society, which relies on an informed citizenry, a productive workforce, and the harmonious coexistence of multiple cultures. From another perspective, teachers are confronted with classrooms of children they feel ill-prepared to teach.
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. · The National Association of State Boards of Education Task Force on Early Childhood Education has explicitly recommended that state boards of education encourage the use of children's home language and culture to foster the development of basic skills, including English acquisition (National Association of State Boards of Education, 1988~.
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On the basis of the planning workshop, the Board on Children and Families convened a workshop, "Culture and Early Education: Assessing and Applying the Knowledge Base," on November 29-30, 1993. The workshop had two primary aims: to inform educators about the research base that is available to guide decisions about how best to educate children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds and, in particular, to distinguish whether and how one might expect optimal early childhood education for diverse classrooms to differ from that for culturally homogeneous classrooms; and to urge more scholars, including those who conduct basic research on early learning processes, to address the vast agenda of unanswered questions regarding the early education of culturally and linguistically diverse groups of children.
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The samples they studied included African American, Native American, Caribbean, Portuguese, Anglo, and Latino children from Central America, Mexico, and Puerto Rico; children from first-, second-, and third-generation immigrant families; and children living in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America, and other countries. Virtually every participant had spent substantial amounts of time in early childhood classrooms that serve diverse groups of children and many had worked directly with the families of the children they studied.
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Children from lowincome African American families, in particular, were portrayed as being culturally deprived by their families' failure to provide appropriate stimulation and adequate preparation for school. Opponents of deficit reasoning asserted that minority students do poorly in school not because their home environments are inferior, but because their strengths are not recognized or used in school settings (Ogbu, 1978; Tharp and Gallimore, 1988; Tharp, 1989~.
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In situations in which a child's health is fragile or neighborhood violence threatens children's safety, keeping children confined and away from danger will likely be much higher on the list than promoting cognitive development. Overall, the participants agreed that it is important to acknowledge variation in the extent to which home environments provide children with the materials and experiences that are broadly considered desirable for success in U.S.
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This politically charged context underscores the critical importance of having a solid knowledge base with which to inform policy and practice. · Academic success involves knowledge and skill acquisition, as well as motivational and social dimensions of learning.
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Readers familiar with this field of study will appreciate the caution with which the participants approached the existing research literature. People in the early childhood community seeking clear advice about educational practices are likely to be frustrated by the limited degree to which preschool children or preschool settings have been studied in terms of questions of culture and schooling.
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