Hidalgo's+levels+of+culture

Text adapted from: Hidalgo, N. (n.d.). //Multicultural Teacher Introspection//. Retrieved April 23, 2012, from Sidorkin.com: @http://sidorkin.com/408/Hidalgo.PDF


 * Multicultural Teacher Introspection **

// By Nitza M. Hidalgo //

Many educators around the country are interested in developing a multicultural approach in their teaching. They find themselves in classroom with 25 children of varying racial and cultural backgrounds and are looking for ways to connect what they do in the classroom to the cultures represented by their students. Before we can begin to understand others, however, we need to understand ourselves and what we bring to our interactions with others. For this reason, it is important for teachers interested in learning more about other cultural groups to first look inward.

The initial step in the process involves introspection. Teachers need to ask themselves some fundamental questions: What framework do we bring into the classroom? How does our cultural perspective color our view of the worlds? Posing these questions helps teachers analyze the deep-rooted cultural features of their backgrounds. Teachers may thus begin the process of understanding how our beliefs and behaviors are culturally based and how our system of beliefs is similar to or different from our students’ beliefs.

Many teachers may not be accustomed to thinking of ourselves as cultural or ethnic. This experience in likely rooted in our training and socialization, both direct and indirect, which have been monocultural in nature.

The irony is that each of us has been socialized in some culture, and often more than one culture. Our culture provides a lens through which we view the world and interpret our everyday experiences. 3 Culture informs what we see and understand, as well as what we omit and misconstrue. Many components make up our view of the world: our ethnic and racial identification, the region of the country we come from, the type of neighborhood we live in, our socioeconomic background, our gender, the language(s) we speak, our disabilities, our past experiences, and our life-style. We need to think about the ways in which these parts of us define our perspectives.

We may think about culture as existing on at least three levels: the symbolic, the behavioral, and the concrete. 4 Our values and beliefs lie on the symbolic level. How we ascribe meaning to our experiences depends on the values we hold and the beliefs that we may have. This level is the most abstract and difficult to articulate, yet it is essential to our interpretation of the world. This level of culture is implicit and shared by others within our reference group. Our values and beliefs help us to interpret our experiences and shape socially appropriate behavior. For example, the definition of family may vary from one cultural group to another, depending on the importance the group places on family cohesiveness. The Puerto Rican concept of family may go beyond the extended family to kinlike relations with friends (compadres/comadres), while the U.S. American definition of family may include only the nuclear family living at home.5

The behavioral level refers to how we define our social roles, the languages(s) we speak, the rituals we practice, and the form taken by our nonverbal communication. Our behavior reflects our values. The roles we ascribe to women and man within U.S. culture are different from the gender roles of other cultures. Even within our culture, for instance, the role of women has undergone subtle modifications because of the women’s movement. These role ascriptions are based on our beliefs, as a society, about the importance of women’s work and their contribution to the household. In response, men have also had to redefine their roles within various situations as evidenced by the development of parenting, rather than solely maternity, leave policies. Also on the behavioral level, language mirrors thought: our language reflects our beliefs and values. Think about the associations we make with simple words like black and white. Is it sheer coincidence that we can generate many negative connotations for the word black and many positive connotations for the word white? Regarding language, the feminist movement has worked to eliminate commonplace correlations such as men and girls (versus men and women) because of the inequality inherent in this type of comparison. These are subtle distinctions that have profound effects on our thinking.

Educators often begin to think about multiculturalism at the concrete level, yet movement to a more abstract understanding is needed. The concrete culture is the most visible and tangible level. The products of culture, such as our cultural artifacts, exist at this level. Technology, music, foods, and artistic works and materials are the concrete, visible elements of culture. This is what is most often interpreted as “the culture” of ethnic groups. School festivals highlighting ethnic foods, flag displays from different countries, performance of ethnic music, and playing international games tend to result in a superficial and exotic impression of multiculturalism. This would be comparable to French students expecting to learn about U.S. culture by studying our ritual practices on the Fourth of July. Knowing about barbecues and fireworks displays tells French students little about the meaning Independence Day has in our nation. Foods, holidays, games, and artifacts reveal little about how ethnic groups experience and make meaning of the world.

Given this definition of culture, we can begin to explore how our own cultural perspectives shape our thinking and actions. In order to answer eventually the broad question of how our cultural perspective influences our work in the classroom.

The author wishes to thank the National Coalition of Advocates for Students, Boston, for their support of the initial version of this paper. 1. J Banks and C. McGee Banks, //Multicultural Education: Issues and// //Perspectives //(Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1989). See also J. Banks, //Teaching// //Strategies of Ethnic Studies //5 th ed. (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1991). 106
 * Acknowledgement **
 * Notes **

2. C. Grant, “Urban Teachers: Their New Colleagues and Curriculum,” //Phi Delta// //Kappan //(June, 1989): 764-770.

3. J. Spradley, //The Ethnographic Interview// (New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1979).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">4. M. McGoldrick, J. Pearce, and J. Giodano, eds., //Ethnicity and Family Therapy// (New York, NY: The Guilford Press, 1982).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">5. R. Salgado, “The Puerto Rican Family,” in //Puerto Ricans in the Mid 80’s: An// //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">American Challenge //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">(Alexandria, VA: National Puerto Rican Coalition, Inc, 1985).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">6. H. Sheldon and D. Burden-Patmon, //Odyssey Exercise// (Boston, MA: Community Change, Inc., n.d.).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">7. L. Derman-Sparks and the A.B.C. Task Force, //Anti-Bias Curriculum// (Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children, <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">1990).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">8. N. Hidalgo, //“i saw Puerto rico once:” A Review of the Literature on Puerto// //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Rican Families and School Achievement in the United States //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">, technical report (Boston, MA: Center on Families, Communities, Schools & Children’s Learning, 1992).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">9. J. Nine-Curt, //Puerto Rican Non-Verbal Communication// (Cambridge, MA: National Assessment and Dissemination Center for Bilingual Education, 1978).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">10. S. Sarason, //The Predictable Failure of Educational Reform// (San Fransisco, CA: Jossey Bass Publishers, 1990).