List of Inclusionary Practices

List of Inclusionary Practices for Cultural Acceptance/ Integration

There are many approaches to assist educators with ensuring cultural acceptance and integration for students of the Chinese culture. These approaches provide educators and students with the necessary means of matching educational philosophy, the school’s culture, and support that best fits the individuals’ needs. Wardle (2013) discuss how teachers need to discover the approach that best match to their own knowledge, personal education philosophy, and school culture. The approaches are that of teaching of the exceptional and culturally different, human relations approach, multicultural education approach, content integration approach and knowledge construction process.

1.      Teaching of Exceptional and Culturally Different

The use of this approach assist educators in equipping all students with knowledge, skills, values, and dispositions that prepares them for future employment within the American society. Educators accomplish this approach by first identifying the learner’s strength and continue to build upon that strength. Wardle (2013) discuss how teachers often begin by assessing the level of their students in each content area compared to grade level standards, and then develop approaches to them catch up much like Response to Intervention. Educators who understand cultural, linguistic, and other student diversities adjust to their instructional approaches without lowering expectations. The method of instructional approaches include small group and cooperative learning, using the student preferred learning styles, and the use of relating new concepts to students’ own personal experiences. This is a factor with the growing demand on Distance Education because the only way for an educator to know about students’ culture is through the means of introduction. Then, there are times when students do not provide the instructor with full background knowledge. According to Jung, Wong, Li, Baigaltugs, & Belawati (2011), as suggested by Perraton (2000), the goal of DE for some countries (or providers) is to achieve a level of quality on par with that of face-to-face education. However, Stella and Gnanam (2004) have suggested that DE is so distinctive that the aims and methods of face-to-face education cannot be applied in assessing its quality. Furthermore, as Koul (2006) has commented, DE should be judged by the standards of face-to-face education while factoring in some distinctive features of DE, such as open entry, flexible operations, and technology-based course delivery. 

2.     Human Relation Approach

This approach focuses on helping students to learn together harmoniously because of the changes within the world where a diverse group of people will work and learn together. Educators use this approach to teach learners the importance of respecting each other that promotes feelings of tolerance, unity, and acceptance. According to Wardle (2013), the human relations approach teaches positive feelings among diverse students, promotes group identity and pride for students of color, and works to reduce all forms of stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination (Grant & Sleeter, 2013).

3.     Multicultural Education Approach

The focus of this approach is to reduce prejudice and discrimination against oppressed groups, work towards equal opportunity and social justice for all, and to provide knowledge of equitable distribution of power among different culture groups. Educators use this approach to teach students the changes within the educational system by reforming the schools along principles of pluralism and equality where these actions cause the society to be reformed.

4.      Content Integration Approach

This approach provides educators with an opportunity to integrate content and concepts from different groups into their curriculum. These additions help students to learn about diversity. Wardle (2013) discuss that this approach illustrates how each member of a different group brings knowledge to education. In the content integration approach, teachers integrate content and concepts from various groups into their curriculum and instruction (Banks, 2013a), such as information about famous female artists, Black inventors, Hispanic scholars, and politicians with disabilities. The nature of this integration depends on the content area being taught (e.g., it may be easier to integrate this information into social studies than math), the knowledge of the teacher, and the age of the students. Unfortunately, many curricular content areas initially appear to lack diversity, largely because of historical and political biases and stereotypes. Therefore, teachers must actively do their own investigations, research, and be open to challenging pervasive biases.

5.      Knowledge Construction Process

This process focuses on teachers using curricular content to aid student in understanding, investing, analyzing, and determining how cultural contexts, historical events, frames of references and various assumptions can influence the way knowledge is constructed. Wardle (2013) illustrates how this includes learning to deconstruct images and messages received from the media, and from political, social, and cultural institutions. For example, a teacher might use a Disney film to analyze the role of women, the poor, and minorities. In this approach, students also need to understand how schools and the official curriculum are part of the knowledge construction process. The students could analyze how the supposed science of racial categories developed out of the need to justify slavery and a view of White superiority, or how the initial purpose of IQ tests was to keep students out of government schools and screen soldiers for the U.S. Army (Smedley, 2002). Another assignment could involve a study of the Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994), a modern example of the use of science and scholarship to bias knowledge content and counter arguments presented in other books, including Race and Intelligence: Separating Science from Myth (Fish, 2002). 

Teaching Strategies

The teaching strategies that would help this group from an instruction standpoint are teaching that includes the importance of different members of a diverse group. The Chinese believe in more of a family bonding that holds high value to their society. Liu (2012), discuss how education is at the center of Chinese people’s lives. It is not only the path of self-improvement that leads to becoming a noble person, an ethical pursuit and the highest goal for humanity in Chinese eyes (Tu 1993), but it also has been the most important avenue of social mobility. At a societal level, education was a mechanism to select elite for governance in imperial times, and this function has been further extended to training administrative and technical elites to promote national development in modern China. Unlike Western individualism, Chinese culture gives primacy to family and society (Tu 2002). Close family bonds are a core feature of Chinese society. The relationships among people are based on reciprocal responsibilities accepted through an internalized consensus within ethical and moral guidelines, in sharp contrast to the practice of regulating human relationships through law in the Western world. The teaching strategies must focus on the best method of how this culture learns within the classroom and compares to the ties of their culture.

Incorporating Parents in the Learning Process

Parents play a major role in the success of their children education. When parents take an active role in showing genuine concern for their progression, their children show school provide a means for educators to better equip the learners with knowledge. According to Wardle (2013), one result of family involvement is that children in these families make friends easier and are more successful learners (NCPIE, 2006). Another result is that children stay in school longer and take more advhanced classes (Barnard, 2004). Finally, children of successful home-school partnerships are more motivated to succeed in school (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2005; Kersey & Masterson, 2009). According to Hill & Taylor (2004), family involvement works through two major processes: increasing social capital and increasing social control. The methods of getting parents involved with their school work is to invite them to the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) Meetings and have the class to sponsor events that includes their parents. Having parent who are willing to volunteer to present cultural experiences or customs to the class helps in promoting diversity and understanding of the culture. 

Parents of the Chinese culture believe in supporting their children with their education. This is a major part of their culture and the importance of education is one of the high priorities of the Chinese. Liu (2012) discuss how Chinese families have an immense willingness to invest in their children’s education to the fullest extent possible. The consumer surveys conducted by the China People’s Bank in multiple years since the late 1990s have repeatedly shown that children’s education has been listed as the most important rationale for family saving. The close family bonds can extend to grandparents and other relatives, or even to a clan or a village and ensure significant resources in terms of financial support that children can draw upon. This can be traced back to a common practice hundreds of years ago in the Ming and Qing dynasties in which a community or a clan set up a joint chest to subsidize the travel of candidates attending civil service examinations at the provincial and metropolitan levels (Ho 1962). This context has greatly bolstered policies regarding expansion, privatization, and cost sharing in higher education.

References

Hongcheng, S., & Minhui, Q. (2010). The other in education: The distance between school education and local culture. Chinese Education and Society, 43(5), 47-61. Retrieved fromhttp://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cpid&custid=s8856897&db=eric&AN=EJ919536&site=ehost-live; http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/CED1061-1932430503

Jung, I., Wong, T. M., Li, C., Baigaltugs, S., & Belawati, T. (2011). Quality assurance in asian distance education: Diverse approaches and common culture. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(6), 63-83. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cpid&custid=s8856897&db=eric&AN=EJ963932&site=ehost-live

Liu, J. (2012). Examining massification policies and their consequences for equality in chinese higher education: A cultural perspective. Higher Education: The International Journal of Higher Education and Educational Planning, 64(5), 647-660. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cpid&custid=s8856897&db=eric&AN=EJ980247&site=ehost-live; http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10734-012-9517-4

Wardle, F. (2013).Human Relationships and Learning in the Multicultural Environment.  San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.

YouTube (2010). Diverse Learners and Classroom Organization- American College of   Education Video. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB87i48pRhk