Cultural Intelligence: Closing the Achievement Gap

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Cultural Intelligence Closing the Achievement Gap
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Agenda

• Survey audience using clickers
• Discuss and define cultural gaps between todays
  students and teachers (video clips)
• Examine cultural adjustments that must be made.
• Take a look at future demographics and current
  cultural gaps
• Small group activity
• Define Cultural Intelligence and see specific
  examples where applying it can increase
  achievement
• End with Question/Answer period

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How do you identify yourself?

• African American
• Hispanic
• Caucasian
• Asian
• Native American
• Two of the above
• More than 2 of the above
• None of the above

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How do you identify yourself?

• Digital Native
• Digital Immigrant

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How do you identify yourself primarily?

• Visual learner
• Auditory learner
• Kinesthetic learner
• Tactile learner
• Tactual learner

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How Important is Your Music to You?

• It defines me. I listen to it whenever possible.
• I love my favorite kind of music and listen to it
  often.
• I like listening to my music. But I only listen
  to it occasionally.
• I like music but it isnt very important to me.

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Complete the sentenceWhen I come to school I

• Can pretty much be myself.
• Have to leave behind much of who I am.

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Look Back - How Many Cultural Gaps Exist Between
You and Your Students?
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"My teachers support me and care about my success
in their class"
Resource The Trouble with Black BoysThe Role
and Influence of Environmental and Cultural
Factors on the Academic Performance of African
American Males by Pedro Antonio
NogueraCambridge, Massachusetts from In Motion
Magazine May 13, 2002
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"Moreover, there is research that suggests that
the performance of African Americans, more so
than other students, is influenced to a large
degree by the social support and encouragement
they receive from teachers."

• Resource The Trouble with Black BoysThe Role
  and Influence of Environmental and Cultural
  Factors on the Academic Performance of African
  American Males by Pedro Antonio
  NogueraCambridge, Massachusetts from In Motion
  Magazine May 13, 2002

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Some Components of Culture

• Values
• Customs and traditions
• Age
• Gender
• Religious beliefs
• Political beliefs
• Sexual orientation
• Perceptions of family
• Perceptions of community
• Differing abilities

• Education
• Social class
• Family composition
• Geographic location
• Country of origin
• Preferred language
• Communication style
• Food preferences
• Family, Organizational, and Community
  relationships
• And more

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Making Cultural Adjustments

• What parts of their culture do you think your
  students might need to keep hidden when they go
  to school? How about you?
• ___first language?
• ___religious beliefs?
• ___taste in music?
• ___food?
• ___communication style?

• ___natural hairstyle?
• ___political opinions?
• ___gender expectations?
• ___sexual orientation?
• ___hidden disability?
• ___overall cultural identity?

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National Center for Education Statistics
Percentage of all 16- to 24-year-olds who were
high school dropouts, by race/ethnicity 2006
3/16/2009
ASCD Dr. R. Bucher and P.L. Bucher
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Dropout rate economic implications

• According to a 2007 Brookings Institution study,
  if the U.S. could cut in half the number of high
  school dropouts in a single group of 20-year olds
  (about 700,000 individuals), the country would
  gain, and accrue for each successive group, 45
  billion through extra tax revenue and reduced
  public health, crime and justice, and welfare
  costs.
• MSTA Action Line, March 2009

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Projected United States Population by Race and
Ethnicity 2020 and 2050
Source U.S. Census, 2008
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Surnames
Surnames - interactive page
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Public School Students and Teachers A Growing
Racial Gap
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From White Teachers, Diverse Students
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Studying your Students by Listening
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How Important are the Cultural Gaps that May
Exist Between You and Your Students?

• If you cant reach me,
• How you gonna teach me?
• Gangstas Paradise
• You going to just start teaching us? We dont
  even know who you are.
• So how do we begin to reach across these gaps?

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Cultural Intelligence
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Why Culturally Intelligent Teaching Matters

• Enables teaching across cultural gaps
• Creates a classroom climate conducive to
  learning
• Increases student engagement
• Increases student achievement and retention
  for all students thereby narrowing the
  achievement gap.
• Bottom line

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Culturally Intelligent Education is NOT

• A list of dos and donts for specific cultures
• The result of good intentions
• Something we do or dont know how to do.
• Simply a matter of understanding cultural
  differences
• Important for just some of us
• Treating everybody the same
• Using the right language

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Nine Megaskills

• Nine Megaskills
• Understanding My Cultural Identity
• Checking Cultural Lenses
• Global Consciousness
• Shifting Perspectives

• Intercultural Communication
• Managing Cross-Cultural Conflict
• Multicultural Teaming
• Dealing with Bias
• Understanding the Dynamics of Power

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Applying CQ

• Dealing with Bias
• Intercultural Communication
• Understanding the Dynamics of Power
• Global Consciousness - Technology

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CQ MEGASKILL Dealing with Bias

• Label activity
• Please group yourselves, as best as is possible,
  into groups of 5-6
• Please take out the envelope marked do not open
  yet
• WITHOUT ANYBODY SEEING WHAT YOU HAVE, open it
• Each member of the group is to place a sticker on
  another member of your group WITHOUT THE PERSON
  GETTING THE STICKET SEEING WHAT IS WRITTEN ON IT.
• For the next 10 minutes, please discuss this
  conference and your experiences so far, treating
  each person LIKE THEIR LABEL.
• DO NOT REVEAL what others labels are.
• After the discussion, see who knows their label.
• Each group member now discuss how it felt to be
  treated like your label.

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CQ MEGASKILLIntercultural Communication

• Sequential vs. Looping
• Wait time

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MEGASKILL Intercultural Communication

• Sample self-assessment questions from Building
  Cultural Intelligence
• When I think about how well I communicate, I tend
  to focus almost exclusively on what I say rather
  than on my body language. Does this statement
  apply to you?
• Does my communication style differ from those
  around me at work, at home, and in other
  settings?

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CQ MEGASKILLIntercultural Communication

• Mnemonics look for cross-cultural ones
• jingles used around the world in sales
  campaigns
• Age can sometimes be determined by jingles
• Pepsi Cola Hits the ______
• Oh I wish I were an __________
• Heres a story, of a lovely lady, who was
  ________________
• Now this is the story all about howMy life got
  flipped, _____________

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CQ MEGASKILLIntercultural Communication

• You get the product when you multiply

• With division, division, its the quotient, the
  quotient.

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Megaskill Understanding the Dynamics of Power

• the American educational traditiona history that
  begins with Indian Boarding Schools where
  youngsters were systematically stripped of their
  language, their spiritual practices, their
  families and communities, and continues today in
  many urban schools where nothing about students
  families, communities, or experiences is deemed
  worthy by officials of constructing a meaningful
  educational practice. (but instead offers) a
  process that attempts to break children as a
  prerequisite to teaching them. William Ayers

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• But in two meta-analyses involving nearly 19,000
  students, Walton and Spencer found that when
  schools go out of their way to ameliorate
  stereotype threats, the performance of women and
  minorities soars -- it's as if these students are
  athletes who have been running against a
  headwind.
• Without the headwind, Walton and Spencer found
  that minorities, and women in math and science,
  do not just do as well as whites and men -- they
  outperform them.

How a Self-Fulfilling Stereotype Can Drag Down
Performance By Shankar Vedantam Washington Post,
Monday, February 2, 2009 Page A05
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What next?
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(No Transcript)