Gloria Landsing Billings has a new book out that looks at similar issues
but argues it is "culturally relevant pedogogy" that makes the difference.
Her argument reminds me of Tharp and Gallimore to a certain extent which
would seem to put a lot of emphasis on the last point.
*Race, Class, and Power in School Restructuring*
(Suny Series, Restructuring and School Change)
by Pauline Lipman, Gloria Ladson-Billings (1998)
"This book challenges common assumptions about the efficacy of teacher
collaboration, empowerment, and professional development to improve the
educational experiences of low-achieving African American students without
engaging the political and ideological contexts in which reforms take
place. Written in a clear, engaging style, the book tells the story of two
restructuring junior high schools in a single district, and how teachers'
ideologies and race, class, and power contradictions in the schools, school
district, and city shaped outcomes. Although the book is a critique of
restructuring, powerful portraits of teachers who create culturally
responsive and empowering educational experiences demonstrate the potential
to reform educational practices and policies for African American students
and suggest a direction for transforming schools."
While different points are emphasized Billings generally sees "culturally
relevant teachers" as the major force which makes a difference. From
*Dream Keepers* this would be defined against assimilation as follows,
page 25
"Teachers who practice culturally relevant methods can be identified by the
way they see themselves and others. They see teaching as an art rather
than a technical skill. They believe that all their students can succeed
rather than failure is inevitable for some. They see themselves as a part
of the community and see themselves giving back to the community"
..."They believe that knowledge is continously recreated, recycled, and
shared by teachers and students alike. They view the content of the
curriculum critically and are passionate about it. Rather than expecting
students to demonstrate prior knowledge and skills they help students
develop that knowledge by building bridges and scaffolding for learning".
My understanding is while she points to macro forces as in contradictions
between race/class and middleclass culture, she sees the resolution in the
teachers who take a culturally relevant approach. She studies schools
which carry out similar types of reforms but in one school the
teachers/school has beliefs that are "culturally relevant" and in the other
school they are not. I would suspect while both see teachers behavior as
essential, Billings sees it in a much more complicated way as involving our
beliefs about race, class, and power. Student conditions would not be
solely for the students but also the family and community. School not
severed from community/culture, more as a "boundary where different
communities meet" as in Vann's quote of Marx.
I guess when I read that section the thought that popped into my head was
what kind of successful schools do we want? There can be good and bad
successful schools, bad schools that are sucessful in reproducing the
dominant culture, and better ones which I see sociocultural approaches
attempting to emphasize. I think Rutter's list is a starting point, but is
pretty assimilationist. I know its a conservative genre, but Delpit,
Billings, Tharp & Gallimore and others seem to have something important to
say that should not be neglected.
Nate
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Cole <mcole who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Friday, July 16, 1999 10:25 AM
Subject: School Atmosphere Query
>
> Dear Colleagues-
> Below is a description of work conducted 20 years ago by
> Michael Rutter on how "school atmosophere" ("culture") may have
> effects that are discontinuous with those predictable from the
> demographics of the surrounding communities. Does anyone know of
> comparable work conducted in recent years?
> mike
> -----
> School Atmosphere
> Research demonstrates convincingly that the quality of children's
experiences at
> school can make a decisive difference in their academic success. Michael
Rutter and
> his colleagues (1979), for example, carried out a large-scale study of
secondary
> schools in central London, where housing conditions are poor,
unemployment and
> crime rates are high, levels of education among adults are low, and
handicapping
> psychiatric disorders are common. These are just the conditions that one
might expect
> would lead to poor educational achievement, and in many cases they do.
Despite these
> unfavorable conditions, some schools were more successful than others in
educating
> their students.
> Rutter and his colleagues discovered that, contrary to expectations,
the
> successful schools were not more modern, their teachers were not better
trained or
> better paid, and their students did not have higher IQs or more favorable
conditions at
> home. The differences were traced to educational conditions within the
schools. Four
> conditions were found to be most important:
>
> Academic emphasis. Schools that clearly demonstrated an expectation
that students
> were in school to master academic subjects produced higher levels of
achievement.
> These expectations were communicated in a variety of ways, such as the
assignment of
> homework and regular displays of excellent work on classroom bulletin
boards. Figure
> 13.12 shows the relationship between the amount of homework assigned and
the
> average examination score pupils achieved. (See also Box 13.5.)
> Teachers' behaviors. When teachers must stop to discipline individual
children,
> everyone tends to lose the thread of the lesson. Successful classrooms
were those
> where teachers could coordinate the entire class at one time; often these
teachers
> expected their students to work silently, on their own.
> Distribution of rewards and punishments. The most successful
classrooms were
> those where punishment was less frequent than praise.
> Student conditions. Schools in which students were free to use the
buildings during
> breaks and at lunchtime, had access to a telephone, and were expected to
keep the
> classrooms clean and pleasant produced better student achievement than
schools that
> were run entirely by adults.
>
> The most intriguing finding was that in the successful schools, each
individual
> factor seemed to feed the others, creating an overall environment, or
"school
> atmosphere," conducive to success. This positive school atmosphere cannot
be
> legislated; it must be created by the staff and the students together.
Each successful
> school arrived at its own conducive atmosphere in its own way, taking its
own distinctive
> mix of approaches.
>