List Books » Bridging Cultures Between Home and School: A Guide for Teachers with Special Focus on Immigrant Latino Families
Authors: Elise Trumbull, Carrie Rothstein-Fisch, Patricia M. Greenfield, Blanca Quiroz
ISBN-13: 9780805835199, ISBN-10: 0805835199
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Taylor & Francis, Inc.
Date Published: April 2001
Edition: 1st Edition
Bridging Cultures Between Home and School: A Guide for Teachers is intended to stimulate broad thinking about how to meet the challenges of education in a pluralistic society. It is a powerful resource for in-service and preservice multicultural education and professional development. The Guide presents a framework for understanding differences and conflicts that arise in situations where school culture is more individualistic than the value system of the home. It shares what researchers and teachers of the Bridging Cultures Project have learned from the experimentation of teacher-researchers in their own classrooms of largely immigrant Latino students and explores other research on promoting improved home-school relationships across cultures. The framework leads to specific suggestions for supporting teachers to cross-cultural communication; organization parent-teacher conferences that work; use strategies that increase parent involvement in schooling; increase their skills as researchers; and employ ethnographic techniques to learn about home cultures. Although the research underlying the Bridging Cultures Project and this Guide focuses on immigrant Latino families, since this is the primary population with which the framework was originally used, it is a potent tool for learning about other cultures as well because many face similar discrepancies between their own more collectivistic approaches to childrearing and schooling and the more individualistic approach of the dominant culture.
In this guide to teacher inservice/preservice education for responding to increasing student diversity, California educators present a framework for bridging school and parent values (e.g., individualism vs. collectivism), and developing teachers as collaborative action researchers. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Preface | xiii | |
Responding to the Increase in Classroom Diversity | xiii | |
Introducing a Framework for Understanding Culture | xv | |
A Truly Useful Theoretical Framework | xvi | |
The Bridging Cultures Project | xvii | |
Organization of the Guide | xix | |
A Few Words about Terminology | xx | |
Acknowledgments | xxi | |
1. | The Bridging Cultures Framework | 1 |
But First, What Is Culture? | 1 | |
The Power of the Bridging Cultures Framework | 2 | |
Limitations of a Single Model for Child Development | 2 | |
The Dynamic Nature of Culture | 3 | |
Individualism and Collectivism | 4 | |
Further Contrasts between Individualism and Collectivism | 9 | |
Different Orientations, Different Outcomes | 13 | |
Individualism and Collectivism in Collision | 14 | |
Relationship to Other Frameworks for Understanding Cultures | 21 | |
Strands of Multicultural Education | 23 | |
Conclusion | 26 | |
2. | Parent Involvement: Recommended but Not Always Successful | 29 |
"Minority" Parent Involvement | 32 | |
Parent-School Partnerships: Responsibilities of Parents and Schools | 33 | |
Factors Influencing Parent Participation | 43 | |
Questioning Assumptions | 47 | |
Looking beyond Demographics to Interpersonal Processes | 48 | |
Finding Common Ground between Home and School | 52 | |
3. | The Cross-Cultural Parent-Teacher Conference | 55 |
What Is a Cross-Cultural Parent-Teacher Conference? | 56 | |
The Tradition of Parent-Teacher Conferences | 57 | |
Research on Cross-Cultural Parent-Teacher Conferences | 58 | |
Culture and Communication in the Parent-Teacher Conference | 59 | |
Using Cultural Knowledge to Enhance Communication | 63 | |
Improving Parent-Teacher Conferences | 66 | |
Putting the Parent-Teacher Conference in Proper Perspective | 72 | |
4. | Learning What Works | 75 |
Understanding Parents' Points of View | 78 | |
Evaluating the Messages That Schools Send | 80 | |
Being More Conscious of the Messages Sent | 81 | |
Developing Closer Personal Relationships with Families | 81 | |
Extending Opportunities for Parent-Teacher Interaction | 83 | |
Promoting Bicultural Proficiency | 87 | |
5. | Teachers as Researchers | 91 |
Action Research | 92 | |
Inquiry and Reflection: Two Intertwined Elements in Action Research | 94 | |
Teachers as Researchers in the Bridging Cultures Project | 96 | |
Collaborative Action Research | 97 | |
Ethnographic Inquiry | 103 | |
Teacher Research as Professional Development | 113 | |
How Successful Has Collaborative Action Research Been in the Bridging Cultures Project? | 118 | |
A Hope and a Touch of Reality | 122 | |
6. | Conclusion: The Challenge of Coming Together | 127 |
The Need for Cultural Knowledge | 128 | |
Update: What's Happening Now? | 130 | |
How Does Bridging Cultures Fit into the Big Picture of School Reform? | 130 | |
What's to Be Gained? | 132 | |
Appendix | The Bridging Cultures Project in Brief | 137 |
Background and Purpose | 137 | |
The People | 138 | |
Phase I | Procedures | 138 |
Workshop Outcomes | 141 | |
Phase II | Changes in Teachers' Roles | 142 |
Documenting Teacher Change | 143 | |
Powerful Examples Make the Framework Come Alive | 144 | |
References | 145 | |
Author Index | 159 | |
Subject Index | 167 |