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WestmontCollege
Fall 2007
ED 105
Perspectives on Cultural Diversity and Education (4 units)
Instructor: Dr. Andrew Mullen
Office: PorterCenter 3
Phone: 565-6288
E-mail:
Note that this is probably the most efficient way to contact instructor.
Office hours: Monday & Wednesday, 3:15 – 5:15
Although technically these are drop-in hours, I recommend calling or e-mailing for an appointment. If official hours are not convenient, you may also schedule an appointment at another time.
Course time and location: Voskuyl 108—Tuesday & Thursday, 1:15 – 3:05
Catalog description:
Introduces students to the changing cultural diversity in Californiaand the nation, and issues of multicultural education relevant to K-12 schooling. Crosscultural field experience required.
Fulfillment of Westmont’s General Education requirements:
Thinking Globally
One of the aims of a liberal arts education has always been to develop a less provincial, more cosmopolitan view of the world. While many courses, particularly in history, foreign languages, and the social sciences, may naturally contribute to such a view of the world, this course is designed explicitly to develop a less culture-bound perspective on schools and the task of teaching.
In this course, you will be invited to develop greater understanding of, and greater capacity to respond to, students from a variety of groups outside the American cultural mainstream. As such the course fulfills Westmont’s General Education requirement in Thinking Globally.
Writing Within the Major
In grappling with issues as complex and potentially explosive as those in this course, it is essential that we bring to the task our best individual and collective thinking. One means of cultivating careful thinking is toreflect in writing. That is to say, writing serves not only a record of our completed thought, but also as a process toward thinking more carefully about the issues before us. In the process of setting words and ideas on paper, we slow down our thinking, sifting and weighing and paying attention to our ideas in ways that we may fail to do consistently when talking or engaging in merely internal reflection.
In this course, you will be asked to submit four assignments that call for careful attention to the written word. The clarity, forcefulness, and richness of your writing will be considered in the evaluation process, in addition to your mastery of traditional academic content. As such, the course fulfills Westmont’s General Education requirement for a Writing Intensive Course within the Major.
Required texts:
- Guadalupe Valdes, Con Respeto: Bridging the Distances Between Culturally Diverse Families and Schools—An ethnographic Portrait. Teachers College Press, 1996.
- Abigail & Stephen Thernstrom, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning. Simon & Schuster, 2003.
- Ruby K. Payne, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, 4th edition. Aha!, 2005.
- Richard Rodriguez: Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez—An Autobiography. David R. Godine, 1981.
Intended course outcomes:
By the end of this course, students should be better equipped to:
- Identify major demographic shifts in California and the nation as a whole, and their impact on public education.
- Identify major policy shifts pertinent to diversity, at the state and national levels, and their impact on public education.
- Explain different models of multicultural education, historically and today.
- Articulate a personal philosophy of addressing cultural differences in the classroom.
- Identify distinctive historical circumstances and/or cultural elements pertinent to the education of selected major sub-groups in America today.
- Identify classroom practices that may help to foster success for students from major groups outside the cultural mainstream.
- Demonstrate empathy for students, parents, and fellow-educators who are culturally different than themselves.
- Articulate an understanding of how selected aspects of the Christian faith might affect one’s approach to diversity in the classroom.
- Demonstrate clear written communication skills, in particular (1) the disposition to resist using clichés or other trite language to capture complex and ambiguous experiences; and (2) the ability to demonstrate careful analysis of texts, in addition to expressing personal reflections.
Course requirements:
1. Attend each class session. Participate insightfully in large- and small-group discussion.
2. Take two exams, both of which will include limited-response and essay sections.
3. Essay on Cultural and Educational Formation
Use Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory as a springboard to exploring in 8-10+ pages your own cultural and educational background. Reflect on your family background, neighborhood, ethnicity, schooling, public and private religious experience, your “historical moment,” and the ways in which all of these factors interacted to shape your own identity.
Unlike superficially similar autobiographical exercises you may have done in previous classes (a) be sure to emphasize whenever possible points of similarity or dissimilarity with Rodriguez. In other words, this essay should be as much about Rodriguez and his formation as it is about you and your formation. Include enough appropriate detail and insightful commentary to demonstrate conclusively your careful reading of Hunger of Memory; and (b) Like Rodriguez, be sure to give appropriate attention to the role of schooling in your own cultural formation—the ways in which the school culture reinforced, undermined, or otherwise interacted with other cultural factors; and the way you in particular negotiated any hypothetical points of tension between school and (say) family, church, or neighborhood.
Suggested due date: September 13 (essays accepted without penalty till September 20). Note that the clarity and gracefulness of your writing is a criterion for evaluation on this and all writing assignments in this course.
In keeping with General Education Committee guidelines for Wrting Intensive Courses, this first assignemtn may be revised and resubmitted for re-grading, at your discretion. If you choose to re-submit your essay, an individual deadline must be negotiated with the instructor within one week of receiving back your first paper.
4. Informal Reflection on Ruby Payne
Write a 4-6 page reflection on the Payne volume. Among other possible questions, you might respond to the following:
- What does Payne mean by “poverty”?
- Overall, do you find her a credible and/or persuasive writer?
- How do her observations confirm, or stand in tension with, your own life experience?
- Are there places where she inappropriately overgeneralizes?
- What specific points of advice or insight from Payne will you carry into the classroom? Advice or insight for interacting with other members of the Westmont community who are not of your same social class?
- Why don’t more people, in writing about teachers who work with students from differing backgrounds, talk about social class? Is class unimportant? Are we simply more comfortable as Americans talking about race or ethnicity than we are talking about class?
Due October 16.
5. Con Respeto: Bridging the Gap between Educational Research and Real Live Teachers
Guadalupe Valdes writes about “bridging the distance between culturally diverse families [specifically, recent Mexican-American immigrant families] and schools. And certainly one of my hopes in assigning this admittedly difficult volume is that it would help you—as a future teacher—in bridging that particular gap. But there is least one more pedagogical purpose here, and that is to invite reflection—a bit more systematically than in some of your other courses thus far—on the nature of educational research.
The four major texts assigned in this course are all designed to lead you to deeper understanding of culturally diverse students. But methodologically, the four texts could not be more different. Each begins with a different kind of evidence and processes that evidence in a unique way. Now that you have had a chance to read all four, I’d like you to go beyond reflecting on the content, to reflect on how the author got there.
In addition to reading the text, then, your task is to write a 4-6+ page reflection on how Valdes has constructed her study.
Consider the following questions as you read and respond to the Valdes volume:
- What is the author’s purpose in writing? What specific questions does she hope to find answers to?
- What methods does the author use in pursuing her inquiry? How are these methods different than the methods pursued (say) by Stephen and Abigail Thernstrom, or by Richard Rodriguez? What sorts of disciplinary training (ie., what sort of academic coursework) would you need if you were to decide to follow in the footsteps of Valdes, in pursuing this particular kind of educational research?
- What are some possible strengths and weaknesses of the methods that Valdes employs? Is her work more, or less, enjoyable than some of the other studies you have read in this course? Is her work more, or less, valuable for teachers and policy-makers, than the other studies?
- What conclusions does the author come to? To what extent do these emerge from her data, and to what extent might the conclusions have pre-dated the study? Do you tend to agree or disagree with the author’s conclusion?
- Substance-wise, what did you learn from this book that you can apply as a teacher?
6. Participate in a practicum through a class partnership with a teacher and class at Santa BarbaraCommunityAcademy, a charter school serving a predominantly Latino population. As much as possible, the hours and assignments to be completed for the practicum will be done as part of your regular class time. As part of this experience, you will write a simple personal sketch of your assigned student partner, following a structure that can be readily imitated as you student partner writes about you. Details to be shared separately.
Evaluation formula:
AssignmentPotential value Actual value
Essay in response to Rodriguez20 pts.______
Brief essay in response to Payne10 pts.______
Essay in response to Valdes20 pts.______
Practicum 10 pts.______
Two exams @20 40 pts.____+_____
Course outline:
8/28Introduction: course themes and purposes
8/30Introduction, continued
Read: Hunger of Memory, Prologue and Ch. 1
9/4 Below the Iceberg: Probing the depths of culture
Read: Hunger of Memory, Ch. 2-3
9/6Thinking about our own cultural identity
Read: Complete your reading of Hunger of Memory (Ch. 4-6)
9/11 Responding to difference: Some historical perspective on the American experience, including the emergence of Multicultural Ideals
Assignment: Work on writing your autobiographical essay
9/13Dissenting Voices: Critical perspectives on Diversity
Assignment: Complete your autobiographical essay. [Suggested due date is today. May be submitted as late as 9/20 without penalty.]
9/18The Achievement Gap and what to do about it
Read: No Excuses, Introduction and Ch. 1
9/20To what extent is the achievement gap a problem of Racism or a Racialized Society (I of II)?
Read: No Excuses, Ch. 9
Peggy McIntosh, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
9/25Racism/Racialized Society, continued. Film: Blue Eyed
Read: A framework for understanding poverty, Introduction & Ch. 1-3
9/27To what extent should questions of Social Class enter into our discussion (I of II)?
Read: A framework for understanding poverty, Ch. 4-6
10/2Issues of Class, continued
Read: A framework for understanding poverty, Ch. 7 through the Conclusion
10/4 Test #1
10/9No class. Fall break
10/11African Americans in the Classroom: Perspectives from Ogbu and Perkins
Read: No Excuses, Ch. 7
10/16Field experience #1
Assignment: Submit reflection on Ruby Payne, A Framework for Understanding Poverty
10/18Native Americans in the Classroom: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives. Guest: Dr. Jana Mayfield Mullen
Reading: Article by Karen Swisher; Selected Documents from Prucha volume
10/23 Field experience #2
Read: Con Respeto, Foreword, Preface, and Introduction
10/25 Latinos in the Classroom (I of III).
Read: Con Respeto, Ch. 1-2
10/30Field experience #3
Read: Con Respeto, Ch. 3-4
11/1Latinos in the Classroom (II of III). Guest: Doctoral Candidate Hugo Santos-Gomez from UCSB
Read: Con Respeto, Ch. 5-6
11/6Field experience #4
Read: Con Respeto, Ch. 7-8
11/8Latinos in the Classroom (III of III).
Read: Con Respeto, Ch. 9; No Excuses, Ch. 6
11/13Asians in the Classroom
Read: Article by Ooka-Pang
11/15Exploring issues of gender equity in the classroom. Part of class will also be devoted to a guest speaker and Westmont alum, Nate Monley from Cesar Chavez Charter School, reflecting on his experience with Latino students—and some issues of educational equity more generally
Assignment: Complete your written response to Con Respeto
Additional reading provided by Mr. Monley
11/20Gays & Lesbians in the classroom; Children of Gays & Lesbians. Possible guest speaker.
Read: Extract from Lipkin, Beyond Diversity Day
11/22No class. Thanksgiving break
11/27Muslims and other non-Muslim minorities of middle-eastern origin
Read: Article by Seikaly on The Arab-American Community
11/29 Other religious minorities in the classroom. Multi-racial students
Read: Selections from Half & Half
12/4Special celebration with field experience students
12/6 Final reflections/Review for final
Final exam: Wednesday, 12/12 at 12:00 Noon (Should we make it 12:12?)
Course policies:
Written work. All work should be submitted in traditional, hard-copy form. Please do not e-mail written assignments or submit work on disk.
Late work. All work is due at the time stated on the syllabus. Late work is accepted at the discretion of the instructor and, if accepted at all, may be marked down significantly.
Academic honesty. Academic honesty requires the acknowledgement of where one has located important ideas or the particular wording of those ideas. Breaches of academic honesty for work completed in this course will be handled on an individual basis by the instructor with the seriousness required in such matters. If in doubt about whether to acknowledge the sources for your work, err in the direction of acknowledging your debts.
Attendance/Notification of missed classes. As a participant in a pre-professional course, your punctual attendance is expected at each class session. In the event of calamitous events that preclude your attendance, you need to notify instructor as far in advance as possible, by e-mail (preferred) or voice mail.
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Teaching Performance Expectations to which this course is particularly directed
TPE 7: Teaching English Learners
- Practicum
- Reading and written response to: Con Respeto: Bridging the Distances Between Culturally Diverse Families and Schools—An ethnographic Portrait
- Reading and written response to: Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez.
TPE 8: Learning about Students
- Practicum
- Reading and written response to: A Framework for Understanding Poverty
- Reading and written response to: Con Respeto: Bridging the Distances Between Culturally Diverse Families and Schools—An ethnographic Portrait
TPE 11: Social Environment
- Practicum