What follows is a kind of reader's digest version of Carol Lee's article.
I submit it for two reasons. One, it is relatively easy to skim this
summary, and may inspire someone to read Carol's article once they see how
interesting it is.
Two, I am experimenting with ways to create such digests, and this is an
attempt. It has some problems: it is long, it was time-consuming to
create, it is erratic in its use of quotes, and it does not appropriately
reflect the most interesting portion of Carol's article, the examples of
student literary discussion and how students interacted with the software
Carol discusses. Many of the passages in the digest are lifted directly
from the article and are surrounded by quotes, but some are not. While
most of the wording even without quotes is specifically Carol's, some
sentences use my wording, and this could be misleading if I got something
wrong. So please consider this an experiment in work. Note that the
headings are Carol's and the points in the summary are in the same order as
in the article.
Anyway, here is a quick way to look at the main points in Carol's article,
see what you think.
Toward A Framework for Culturally Responsive
Design in Multimedia Computer Environments:
Cultural Modeling as A Case
Carol D. Lee
MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY, 10(1), 42–61
Copyright © 2003, Regents of the University of California on behalf of the
Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition
This article argues for the importance of taking culture into account when
designing learning environments, including computer-based learning tools.
Computer-based tools are not culturally neutral, and there is little
evidence they are available to students of color or students living in
poverty.
This article details positive experiences with three computer-based tools
that take into account specific language practices and routine cultural
practices of students.
DESIGN AS A CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE PRACTICE
Learning contexts should be designed with the cultural experiences and
practices of the students at the center.
"Although research in cognition and cultural-historical- activity theory
have attended to cultural practices that emanate from disciplinary
communities and work place settings (Engeström, Miettinen, Punamaki, 1999;
Hutchins, 1995; Rogoff & Lave, 1984), very little attention has been paid
to cultural practices based on membership in ethnic and language
communities (exceptions include Cole, 1998; Cole & Scribner, 1981;
Gutierrez, Baquedano-Lopez,&Tejeda, 1999; Lin, 1999; Nasir, 2000; Saxe,
1991; Serpell&Boykin, 1994)."
RATIONALES FOR DIVERSITY IN DESIGN
All persons live in a culturally diverse context, but special attention
must be given "to the cultural worlds of students who have been
traditionally underserved by public education."
"The challenge for designers is to learn, much like anthropologists, what a
target audience—majority or minority—knows and believes relevant to the
learning objectives."
"There are at least four reasons for attending to cultural diversity in the
design of learning tools"
1. The importance of academic prior knowledge is generally acknowledged,
but the importance of prior knowledge in terms of the cognitive
consequences of everyday cultural practices is not.
The work of researchers in cultural-historical theory, Cultural Modeling
Framework and others provide much to learn from in this regard.
This research includes, but is not limited to: Lee, 1993, 1995; Pinkard
2000; Fuson, Smith, & LoCicero, 1997; Moses, Kamii, Swap, & Howard, 1989;
Saxe 1991; Nunes, Schliemann, and Carraher 1993; Rosebery, Warren and
Conant 1992; Moll and Greenberg 1990.
2. It is important to view cultural practices and models as habits of
thinking, as socially constructed ways of knowing that are important in
designing learning environments.
Specific cultural models that persist in cultural groups, such as
signifying talk (clever put-downs) among African American youth, come
packed together with other cultural practices which can be understood and
incorporated in learning design.
3. The ways classroom discourse styles can motivate or discourage
engagement has been researched since the 1970's.
New technologies provide opportunities for designers to incorporate these
insights and enhance student participation, particularly from
non-mainstream language communities.
4. Research from the Benton Foundation shows there is a gap between
low-income students and others' use of educational technology.
Closing this gap with culturally-specific technology will contribute to
empowering low-income students and their communities.
CULTURAL MODELING DESIGN FRAMEWORK
What follows is a description of four major themes in the Cultural Modeling
Design Framework.
Cultural Modeling Design Framework applies to all curriculum design, not
just computer-based tools.
1. Carefully analyze the demands and problems of the specific academic
domain in question.
2. Consider the prior knowledge, including prior assumptions, expectations,
cultural practices, and school experiences the students bring with them.
3. Consider the motivational potentials of possible discourses, especially
discourse styles used outside of school.
4. Select task content and structure strategically; take into account both
the cognitive demands of the domain, but also address community and
personal issues.
The spirit of this objective is taken very seriously, for example, in the
Algebra Project where mathematical literacy is viewed as a civil right
(Moses & Cobb, 2001).
Most curricular reforms today consciously consider students’ prior
knowledge, but rarely take into account cultural knowledge of particular
groups.
Prior knowledge is a crucial element of reading comprehension and literary
interpretation.
"The Cultural Modeling Framework pays special attention to issues of prior
knowledge and literacy teaching."
"One of the fundamental precepts of the framework is that culturally
diverse students, often speaking devalued vernacular language varieties or
first languages other than English, routinely use strategies for
interpreting figurative language, irony, and satire as part of speech acts
in their everyday communications."
"I have argued that the strategies are the same as those used in the
interpretation of literature."
METACOGNITIVE INSTRUCTIONAL CONVERSATIONS AS ENGAGEMENT AND MOTIVATION
"A central activity structure within the Cultural Modeling Framework is the
coordination of metacognitive conversations."
"These are discussions in which students are supported in making public the
strategies they are employing as well as the evidence and reasoning they
are using."
"The norms for talk often involve overlapping multiparty talk, consistent
with many AAEV [African American English Vernacular] discourse norms in
speech events such as signifying, loud talking, and testifying (Smitherman,
1977)."
All works used in the Literature Curriculum developed by Carol "share
either interpretive problems or themes taken from the African–American core."
"The assumption here is that there are at least two categories of problems
in response to literature."
"One involves knowing what kind of interpretive problem you are seeing in a
text and having strategies available to generate a warrantable
interpretation."
"The second involves making sense of the social codes in a text; that is,
understanding, having some empathy (even if one eventually rejects the
social codes) for what motivates characters to act as they do."
"The initially selected African-American texts invite students to grapple
with dilemmas related to racism, self-concept, and resiliency in the face
of danger," and "ways that African Americans have historically sustained
themselves."
"The culturally responsive curriculum and the CBN were part of an
intervention in an underachieving African–American urban high school (Lee,
1993, 1995, 2001)."
The CBN (Collaboratory Notebook) is a software program that allows the
teacher to link specific graphics to text passages, ask interpretive
questions for students to work on, and allows students to collaborate in
group text discussions about their responses to these images, passages, and
the teacher's questions.
Daniel Edelson and Kevin O'Neill of Northwestern University originally
designed this software for use in science eduation; they worked with Carol
to redesign it to the meet the needs of the Cultural Modeling Project.
USING CBN TO SUPPORT TACKLING INTERPRETIVE PROBLEMS IN BELOVED
CBN was developed especially for students who don't yet have the
disposition to interpret canonical texts in terms of their own world.
The approach of Carol and her colleagues was to challenge students with
creating complex interpretations and hypothesizing meaningful relationships
using both the texts and their own personal knowledge.
This portion of Carol's article is the heart of the research she is reporting.
She describes student discussions of text from Toni Morrison's Beloved -
the character Sethe, her story of escaping slavery, and relevant events and
symbols.
Carol explains the complexity of the text passages, and the use of images
linked to text passages in the CBN to emphasize meanings and possible
interpretations.
She reports on examples of student writing that illustrates their work and
progress using the CBN, the screen images linked to the text, and this
Literature Curriculum.
These examples demonstrate several advantages of the CBN.
One, it allows teachers and curriculum designers to create culturally
responsive content.
Two, it allows students to go at their own pace.
Three, it affords students the ability to work within their own cultural
styles and respond in culturally specific ways, such as using AAEV
discourse styles.
Carol provides a number of examples of the use of such discourse styles in
the students' work.
Carol concludes that the CBN demonstrated several unique advantages.
The CBN allowed the flexibility to create content that was both culturally
responsive to the students who would use it, while also constraining a
cognitive focus on argumentation.
The teachers, researchers and software developers observed new uses of the
tool and unexpected windows into understanding the ways the students
appropriated it.
The tool's capacities allowed students to manipulate audio, video and other
data in ways not otherwise possible, allowing students to personalize their
interactions with the learning process.
OTHER CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE DESIGNS IN TECHNOLOGY USE
Carol explains that the New London Group (1996 ) calls for conscious
educational design work that attends to understanding the elements that are
linguistic, audio, spatial, gestural, and visual.
Carol points out that two interfaces for children's interactive programs by
Nichole Pinkard (2000, 2001) using Lyric Architecture addresses all five of
the New London Group's design elements.
She provides an example of a conversation between two girls using Pinkard's
software.
A notable feature of Pinkard's software is the use of game-playing activity
structures, which can be highly responsive to cultural diversity.
Another example Carol discusses is the use of Logo Writer by Paula Hooper.
In a research effort in an African centered elementary school in Boston,
students used this program to construct objects and represent people in
stories they wrote.
Hooper documented the AAEV discourse norms and cultural scripts the
students incorporated into their narratives, including how they chose to
animate characters and scenes.
Hooper’s research provides a fascinating example of the ways in which the
openness and the power of Logo Writer to support imagination can be
culturally responsive.
One example from Hooper's research that Carol touches on is the use by some
of these elementary school students of "the seven principles of The Nguzo
Saba (which form the foundation for the celebration of the African American
holiday of Kwanzaa: Unity, Self-Determination, Collective Work and
Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Creativity, Purpose, and Faith)" as
resources in their programming decisions with Logo Writer.
IMPLICATIONS
Four reasons why taking culture into account is important.
1.Taking culture into account helps build situated theories of learning
which iin turn take into account how students identify themselves as member
of cultural and language communities.
Black psychology research is rarely recognized in mainstream literature but
should be.
2. Taking culture into account is especially important in designing
educational computer tools for students of color and students living in
poverty.
3. Current methods by which we evaluate how computer-based tools are
appropriated do not generally take into consideration differential effects
for groups that differ by ethnicity, race, language use, or class.
4. The potentials of computer-based learning technology provides an answer
to the often cited critique that culturally responsive approaches are too
difficult to apply to the breadth of cultural diversity in the United States.
Carol ends her article with the summary: "The proposition for design as a
culturally responsive practice and the example of the Cultural Modeling
Framework are intended to at least suggest that our fundamental
understandings about learning and about uses of technology to support
learning can be expanded meaningfully by at least placing the question of
culture at the center of our practice."
<end>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Dec 01 2003 - 01:00:11 PST