13.1 Appendix b: deciding for yourself about the research  (Page 11/20)

Interestingly, “caring” involved more than simple warmth and nurturance. It also meant teachers’ asserting their authority to make clear demands on students both for high quality work and for appropriate classroom behavior. Asserting authority indirectly in order to sound polite (like saying “Would you like to sit down now?”) was less effective and was often interpreted by students as a sign of a teacher’s indifference. Direct, specific commands (like “Take your seat”) were more effective, provided they did not also express hostility.

The teachers’ caring had to be consistent in every way: not only did they have to say friendly things to students, but also they had to look friendly with eye contact and smiles. What made such consistency initially challenging for some teachers was recognizing students’ own signs of friendliness for what they were. In some classrooms with African American students, for example, students engaged in a “call response” pattern of interaction: as the teacher gave instructions or explained an idea, some students would say or speak their own feelings or mention their own ideas. The pattern was not meant to interrupt the teacher, however, so much as to show involvement in the lesson or activity, and the teacher needed to acknowledge it as such.

Other educational researchers besides David Brown have found similar results, though some point out that actually practicing culturally responsive management can be harder than simply knowing what it involves (Weinstein, Tomlinson-Clarke,&Curran, 2004). To become skillful with the strategies described by Brown and others, for example, teachers also need to look honestly at their own preconceptions about ethnic, cultural and racial differences, so that they do not misconstrue culturally ambiguous behaviors of students just because students have a background different from the teacher’s own. Teachers also need to be aware of how much society-wide prejudice on students’ sense of efficacy, since pervasive prejudice and discrimination can stimulate some students to withdraw in ways that may be mistaken for laziness.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of culturally responsive management, however, is for teachers to accommodate to students’ cultural differences while also helping them learn how to function well in the somewhat bureaucratic, middle-class oriented “culture” of school. This challenge is full of dilemmas. How much, for example, should a teacher sacrifice conventional “politeness” behaviors (like using indirect questions) simply because students understand and respect directness more easily? How much should a teacher encourage students to critique each other’s or the teacher’s ideas even if students’ families give higher priority to cooperation and compliance with authorities? And what if a particular class is itself culturally diverse, containing students from many cultural backgrounds in one room? What should a teacher do then?

Questions