HOW IS CULTURE REFLECTED IN OUR ROUTINES?
In Managing Diverse Classrooms: How to Build on Students’ Cultural Strengths, Rothstein-Fisch and Trumbull (2008) share an in-depth account of the Bridging Cultures Project, a project that was created to support teachers to use cultural knowledge to increase the educational success of their students. Working in col- laboration with a group of seven teachers (who became researchers in their own classrooms and schools) where immigrant Latino students from Mexico and Central America constituted the majority, they report that:
The result of the teacher’s efforts is a mountain of innovation: a collec- tion of strategies and ideas for classroom organization that are completely field-tested by teachers who have come to understand the central role of culture in learning and teaching. The teachers did not set out to explore classroom management, yet it became the first thing that they changed as a result of their new understanding of the cultural values of their students. (p. xiv)
It is not possible to do justice to summarizing all that Rothstein-Fisch and Trumbull’s findings offer us in the short space of this chapter; for anyone who is interested in developing capacity in this area, the entire book is worth a good read. Instead, here we will share some highlights that might be useful in bring- ing a cultural lens to examining the appropriateness of our routines and how we teach them to students, with an eye to ensuring that none of our students is put in a compromised position where they have to act in opposition to what they have come to believe is the appropriate way to be.
One framework for understanding culture (that served as the foundation of the Bridging Cultures study) focuses on some very fundamental differences
Exhibit 9.2 Elements of an Effective Routine
An effective routine is • efficient,
• clear,
• communicated with positive expectancy (“You CAN do it. You WILL do it.”),
• taught to mastery (i.e., modeled, repeated, and practiced until it is internalized and no longer a “nag”),
• matched to a purpose and group, and
• sometimes matched to individuals where appropriate and necessary.
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PART TWO | MANAGEMENT | ROUTINES
between two types of cultural orientations: individualistic and collectivistic. Rothstein-Fisch and Trumbull (2008) explain the differences:
The fundamental distinction between these two systems is the relative emphasis placed on individual versus group well-being . . . it is not a matter of valuing one or the other—individual or group—but rather the degree of emphasis accorded to each. (p. 9)
Exhibit 9.3 summarizes some of the most important contrasts between the systems. Acknowledging that although this framework has limitations (as is true of any framework), Rothstein-Fisch and Trumbull (2008) found it to be “a good place to start in order to grasp major differences among cultures” (p. 19). They report that “using this streamlined framework . . . teachers were able to generate an almost endless array of strategies for working with the stu- dents and families they served” (p. 8).
Because these particular teachers were working with students who more typi- cally come from a collectivistic cultural orientation, many of the shifts they made in management strategies were guided by that filter: “an approach to stu- dents as a group that takes advantage of its sense of community and desire for group harmony” (Rothstein-Fisch & Trumbull, 2008, p. 101). They prefer to use the term “classroom orchestration” versus “management.” Some examples include routines established that involve students carrying on a group activity