diverse urban classroom urban classroom
Urban Rev (2011) 43:66–89
DOI 10.1007/s11256-009-0143-0
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in a Diverse Urban
Classroom
H. Richard Milner IV
Published online: 9 January 2010
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract While it is well established that the ability of teachers to build cultural
competence is a critical aspect of their work especially in urban and highly diverse
settings, the kinds of experiences that help them build cultural competence is less
clear. The author attempts to contribute to this void by showcasing a White, science
teacher’s experiences in building cultural competence in a highly diverse urban
school. Culturally relevant pedagogy is used as an analytic tool to explain and
uncover the ways in which the teacher develops cultural knowledge to maximize
student learning opportunities. The basic premise of the article is that this White
teacher was able to build cultural congruence with his highly diverse learners
because he developed cultural competence and concurrently deepened his knowledge and understanding of himself and his practices. Practicing teachers, teacher
educators, and researchers are provided a picture of how the teacher builds relationships with his students, how he deepens his knowledge about how identity and
race manifest in the urban context, and how he implements a communal and
collective approach to his work as he builds cultural knowledge and cultural
competence about himself, his students, and his practices.
Keywords Culturally relevant pedagogy Culture Teaching Urban
Race Context Teacher Diverse Science
H. R. Milner IV (&)
Department of Teaching and Learning, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Box 230,
230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203-5721, USA
e-mail: rich.milner@vanderbilt.edu
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Introduction
In this article, I use the conceptual framework, culturally relevant pedagogy,1 as an
analytic tool to examine the tensions, opportunities, and successes inherent in a
White science teacher’s classroom practices in a diverse urban2 school. In
particular, I revisit one of the tenets, cultural competence, of Ladson-Billings’
(2006) conceptualization of culturally relevant pedagogy in an attempt to build on
and from it. The overall research questions that guided this study were: how was this
teacher, Mr. Hall,3 able to build cultural competence in ways that allowed him to
(more) effectively teach his students? And in what ways does Mr. Hall develop
relationships with his students inside and outside the classroom to build cultural
competence? The basic thrust of the argument suggests that there are important
features and decisions of this teacher—how he is able to bridge experiences with his
students, to make important decisions on their behalf, and to work toward cultural
competence—that can shed light on the complexities inherent in a White teacher
teaching in a highly diverse urban context. Moreover, although Ladson-Billings
stressed the fostering and maintenance of cultural competence for students, this
study stresses the importance of teachers developing cultural competence to
maximize learning opportunities in the classroom.
In an important chapter, Ladson-Billings (2006) shared the following regarding a
representative interaction she had with a prospective teacher. The prospective
teacher expressed the following concern to Ladson-Billings: ‘‘Everybody keeps
telling us about multicultural education, but nobody is telling us how to do it!’’
(p. 30). Perplexing to many of those in her audience, Ladson-Billings’ response was
‘‘Even if we could tell you how to do it, I would not want us to tell you how to do it’’
(p. 39). For Ladson-Billings, there were at least two important lessons inherent to
her response to the prospective teacher who queried about how to ‘‘do’’
multicultural education and essentially culturally relevant teaching. For one,
teachers teach a range of students who bring an enormous range of diversity into the
learning environment. There are no one-size-fits-all approaches to the work of
teaching. Teachers must be mindful of whom they are teaching and the range of
needs that students will bring into the classroom. Moreover, the social context that
shapes students’ experiences is vast and complexly integral to what decisions are
made, how decisions are made, and why. In short, the nature of students’ needs will
1
The term culturally relevant pedagogy is often used to discuss or describe the theory of culturally
relevant teaching while the term culturally relevant teaching is used to describe the practice of the theory.
I will use both, pedagogy and teaching, interchangeably throughout this article because I recognize the
interrelated nature of both.
2
There is not a static definition or meaning of the term ‘‘urban’’. Scholars define urban students, urban
environments, and urban education in varying ways. For instance, generally, urban education can be
equated with inner-city schools or large metropolitan regions. Weiner (2003) noted that the literature
paints a negative portrait of the urban context. She explained that lack of success in urban schools is often
described as a result of the ‘‘problems in students, their families, their culture, or their communities’’
(p. 305). To suggest that all urban schools, neighborhoods, people, and other-related contexts are
substandard would be unfairly inaccurate. There are some powerfully-rich knowledge, culture, and
opportunity inherent in urban spaces; yet these resources are too often ignored and/or underexplored.
3
Pseudonyms are used to mask the identity of the teacher, students, and district throughout this article.
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surely vary from year-to-year, from classroom-to-classroom, and from school-toschool.
A second point to Ladson-Billings’ response to the prospective teacher who
complained that she was not being told how to ‘‘do’’ multicultural education is that
no one tells us how to ‘‘do democracy’’ (Ladson-Billings 2006, p. 39); we just do it.
In a similar light, teachers who practice culturally relevant pedagogy do so because
it is consistent with what they believe and who they are. Teachers’ conceptions
guide their practices based on contextual realities and nuances inherent to and in
their work. Teachers practice culturally relevant pedagogy because they believe in
it, and they believe it is the right practice to foster, support, create, and enable
students’ learning opportunities. Similarly, teachers (people) practice democracy for
similar reasons. People are not told how to do democracy because democratic
principles are infiltrated throughout US society. Ladson-Billings suggested that
people practice democracy because they think and believe in its fundamental
principles and ideals. Thus, more than a set of principles, ideas, or predetermined
practices, the practice of culturally relevant pedagogy involves a state of being or
mindset that permeates teachers’ decision-making and related practices.
In the subsequent sections of this article, I elucidate and discuss what I mean by
culturally relevant pedagogy. Inherent in the discussion on culturally relevant
pedagogy is a focus on outcomes and the central tenets of the theory. I then explain
the methods employed in the study. The next section outlines the findings of the
study, and in the final section, I provide implications and conclusions.
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Researchers have made a compelling case for the importance of developing
culturally relevant curriculum and instruction for students, all students, in the P-12
classroom (cf., Foster 1997; Ladson-Billings 1994; Howard 2001). Gloria LadsonBillings (1992), the scholar responsible for conceptualizing culturally relevant
pedagogy, maintained that it is an approach that
serves to empower students to the point where they will be able to examine
critically educational content and process and ask what its role is in creating a
truly democratic and multicultural society. It uses the students’ culture to help
them create meaning and understand the world. Thus, not only academic
success, but also social and cultural success is emphasized. (my emphases
added) (p. 110)
The construct suggests that students develop a critical consciousness and that
they move beyond spaces where they simply or solely consume knowledge
without critically examining it. The idea is that teachers create learning
environments where students develop voice and perspective and are allowed to
participate (more fully) in the multiple discourses available in a learning context
by not only consuming information but also through helping to deconstruct and to
construct it (Freire 1998). Ladson-Billings (1994) further explained that culturally
relevant pedagogy
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uses student culture in order to maintain it and to transcend the negative
effects of the dominant culture. The negative effects are brought about, for
example, by not seeing one’s history, culture, or background represented in the
textbook or curriculum…culturally relevant teaching is a pedagogy that
empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by
using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes. (pp. 17–18)
Educators who create culturally relevant learning contexts are those who see
students’ culture as an asset, not a detriment to their success. Teachers actually use
student culture in their curriculum planning and implementation, and they allow
students to develop the skills to question how power structures are created and
maintained in US society. In this sense, the teacher is not the only, nor the main
arbiter of knowledge (McCutcheon 2002). Students are expected and empowered to
develop intellectually and socially in order to build skills to make meaningful and
transformative contributions to society. In essence, culturally relevant pedagogy is
an approach that helps students ‘‘see the contradictions and inequities’’ (LadsonBillings 1992, p. 382) that exist inside and outside of the classroom. Through
culturally relevant teaching, teachers prepare students with skills to question
inequity and to fight against the many isms and phobias that they encounter while
allowing students to build knowledge and to transfer what they have learned through
classroom instructional/learning opportunities to other experiences.
Outcomes of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
One important question regarding culturally relevant pedagogy has to do with the
relationship between culturally relevant pedagogy and student outcomes. That is,
what are student outcomes when teachers create learning environments and
pedagogical approaches that are shaped by and grounded in culturally relevant
pedagogy? The answer to this question is not one that, I believe, can be answered by
looking exclusively at students’ test score performance. Rather, the outcomes of
culturally relevant pedagogy seem to extend far beyond what might be measured on
a standardized exam. Grounded in Ladson-Billings ideology, as well as my own
research, student outcomes can be captured in at least three broad categories—
especially if readers are willing to think of student outcomes to be prevalent and
possible beyond traditional test score measures.
One outcome of students who experience culturally relevant pedagogy is
empowerment. Students are empowered to examine more intently what they are
learning, to create and to construct meaning, to contribute to the multiple
conversations in a classroom with agency, to succeed academically and socially, and
to gauge contradictions and inequities both in school and outside of school. In
addition, culturally relevant pedagogy allows students to see their culture in the
curriculum and instruction, and students are encouraged to maintain it. This idea of
seeing oneself in the curriculum and through instruction helps students understand
the important ways in which their culture been contributed to various genres of
curriculum content and also to the fabric of US society. And third, students who
experience culturally relevant instruction are challenged through learning
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Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
EMPOWERS students to:
•
Examine educational content and processes
•
create and construct and deconstruct meaning
•
succeed academically and socially
•
see contradictions and inequities in local and larger communities
INCORPORATES student culture in:
•
curriculum and teaching
•
maintaining it
•
transcending negative effects of the dominant culture
CREATES classroom contexts that:
•
are challenging and innovative
•
focus on student learning (and consequently academic achievement)
•
build cultural competence
•
link curriculum and instruction to sociopolitical realities
Fig. 1 Outcomes of culturally relevant pedagogy
opportunities that are innovative and that allow them to meaningfully understand
the sociopolitical nature of society and how society works. In Fig. 1, above, I
attempt to capture and summarize some of the important outcomes—beyond results
on a standardized exam—of culturally relevant pedagogy.
Tenets of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Three interrelated tenets shape Ladson-Billings’ conception of culturally relevant
pedagogy: academic achievement, sociopolitical consciousness, and cultural
competence. Although Ladson-Billings has outlined the three main features of
the theory, the theory has grown, developed, and evolved in some important ways.
The theory—similar to theoretical orientations in education and other disciplines—
has taken on multiple and varied meanings, depending on who is using it and for
what purpose. Ladson-Billings (2006) expressed her regret for using the term
academic achievement when she first conceptualized the theory partly because
educators immediately equated academic achievement with student test scores. It is
important to note that, as outlined in the previous section on outcomes, I have
purposely expanded my conception of the outcome notion. What Ladson-Billings
actually envisioned was that culturally relevant pedagogy would allow for and
facilitate student learning: ‘‘what it is that students actually know and are able to do
as a result of pedagogical interactions with skilled teachers’’ (Ladson-Billings 2006,
p. 34). Academic achievement, then, is about student learning. The idea is that if
students are learning then they will be able to produce the types of outcomes, such
as on standardized (high stakes) examinations, that allow them to succeed
academically.
A second tenet of culturally relevant pedagogy according to Ladson-Billings is
sociopolitical consciousness. Sociopolitical consciousness is about the micro-,
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meso-, and macro-level matters that have a bearing on teachers’ and students’ lived
experiences and educational interactions. For instance, the idea that the unemployment rate plays a meaningful role in national debates as well as in local realities for
teachers and students would be centralized and incorporated into curricula and
instructional opportunities to enable both teachers and students’ levels of
consciousness. Ladson-Billings (2006) stressed that this tenet is not about teachers
pushing their own political and social agendas in the classroom. Rather, she
indicated that sociopolitical consciousness is about helping ‘‘students use the
various skills they learn to better understand and critique their social position and
context’’ (p. 37).
It is Ladson-Billings’ third tenet, cultural competence, that shapes the focus of
this article. For Ladson-Billings, cultural competence is not necessarily about
helping teachers develop a set of static information about differing cultural groups
in order for teachers to develop some sensitivity towards another culture. Rather, for
Ladson-Billings, cultural competence is about student acquisition of cultural
knowledge regarding their own cultural ways and systems of knowing society and
thus expanding their knowledge to understand broader cultural ways and systems of
knowing. Such a position, Ladson-Billings explained, with a focus on cultural
competence being on students runs counter to the ways in which other disciplines
such as medicine, clergy and social work may think about and conceptualize
cultural competence. In medicine, for instance, physicians are sometimes trained to
develop a set of information about differing cultural groups to complement their
ability to work with people who may be very different from them. For instance, it
seems viable and quite logical for younger physicians to be educated to work with
older patients. Bedside manner for physicians might also be enhanced when they
develop knowledge about people living in poverty or people from a different racial
or ethnic background from the doctor. The notion that physicians are attempting to
deepen their knowledge-base about cultural groups for which they have very little
knowledge and understanding can serve as essential knowledge for physicians as
long as they realize the enormous range of diversity inherent within and among
various cultural groups of people.
Where race is concerned, people sometimes misuse the term culture by
collapsing all individuals in a particular race together. To illuminate, the term
African American4 denotes an ethnic group of people—not a singular, static cultural
group; there is a wide range of diversity among and between African Americans
although there are some consistencies as well. African Americans share a history of
slavery, Jim Crow, and other forms of systemic discrimination and racism that bind
the group. At the same time, African Americans possess a shared history of spiritual
grounding, tenacity, and resilience through some of the most horrific situations that
human beings have had to endure. However, while there are shared experiences,
there are also many differences between and among African Americans. Take, for
example, the variance between former Secretary of State Condelesa Rice and
current National Football League (NFL) player, Michael Vick (currently playing for
the Philadelphia Eagles). The differences between these two African Americans are
4
The terms African American and Black will be used interchangeably throughout this article.
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significantly greater than and beyond those of gender or perhaps political affiliation.
While Rice and Vick are both African American and share some similarities
between them, there are countless differences as well. A risk of such training, where
physicians acquire knowledge about varying cultural groups toward cultural
competence, is reifying stereotypes (Ladson-Billings 2006).
Thus, what Ladson-Billings means by cultural competence is ‘‘helping students
to recognize and honor their own cultural beliefs and practices while acquiring
access to the wider culture, where they are likely to have a chance of improving
their socioeconomic status and making informed decisions about the lives they wish
to lead’’ (p. 36). In culturally relevant pedagogy, cultural competence seems to
concern the ability of teachers to help foster student learning about themselves,
others, and how the world works in order to be able to function effectively in it and
also how to contribute to their communities. Building cultural knowledge, for
students, from Ladson-Billings’ perception also has a goal of self and collective
knowledge in order to challenge and transform power structures. The idea is that in
order to have a seat at the table and to be able to participate in discourses of those in
power (Freire 1998), one must deeply understand who those in power are, and they
must understand their own relationship to those in power.
In this article, I build on this notion of cultural knowledge and shift the focus
from the specified focus on students to that of teachers. In other words, I argue that
teachers need to build cultural competence in order to effectively teach their
students, particularly in urban spaces. In the subsequent sections of this article, I
analyze the practices of a White, male, science teacher in his attempts to build
cultural competence in a highly diverse urban school. I turn next to discuss my own
positioning with/in the study.
Situating Myself with/in the Study
Throughout the representation and discussion of the evidence from this study, I use
first person. I use first person because, in a sense, I am telling my own story as much
as I am reporting on the practices of Mr. Hall. As an African American, male
researcher and a former secondary English teacher in a predominantly Black
secondary school in the US who has attempted to build (and who continues to build)
cultural competence, I wanted to understand how this teacher was able to build
cultural competence with his students with a goal of maximizing students’
opportunities to learn. Moreover, as an African American male teacher educator and
researcher, I consistently struggle with how to address, study, and write about race
in my work. Because I am studying a White teacher’s practices and capacities to
build his cultural competence in this study, I attempt to explain some of the tensions
embedded in the practices of studying a participant outside my own racial and
ethnic background. Is it appropriate for me to study matters of race with this
teacher?
In short, I am attentive to how I situate and position my own privileges,
oppression, and assumptions in the process and outcomes of this research focused
on someone outside my racial and ethnic background. I have attempted to address
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these tensions of positionality and my research elsewhere (Milner 2007). As I was
attempting to understand Mr. Hall’s experiences in developing cultural competence,
I was also attempting to more fully and meaningfully understand my own, both as a
high school teacher and currently as a teacher educator/researcher. To be clear, I
remained true to the data and evidence in the study, but I also make explicit my
goals, rationales, and thinking in posing questions and during observations. I agree
with Kerl (2002), who wrote, ‘‘We cannot necessarily know what is true or even real
outside our own understanding of it, our own worldview, our own meanings that are
embedded in who we are’’ (p. 138) as outsiders and insiders. In the next section, I
discuss, in more depth, my decisions and rationales in selecting the research
methods, school, and the participant in the study.
Methods
Building on and from the qualitative research of others (Howard 2001; LadsonBillings 1994), I have been conducting research at Bridge Middle School for two
academic years, approximately 19 months. I began conducting research at Bridge in
September of 2005. The teacher in the study was nominated by the principal in the
school. Broadly, I wanted to learn about, study, and hear the stories of teachers at
Bridge Middle School and to understand and describe how and why teachers
succeeded there. As my time at Bridge evolved, I focused in on how teachers
developed cultural knowledge and competence to teach effectively in the school.
Accordingly, I was also interested in the teacher’s struggles; what issues did he
experience in the school and in his classroom with students that can shed light on
the complexities of teaching and learning in an urban and diverse school? In what
ways were this teacher’s struggles and successes contributory to his building of
cultural competence? Moreover, I was interested in how the teacher managed his
classrooms, how he was able to get parents involved, and how (in terms of
curriculum and pedagogy) the teacher was able to make decisions about learning
opportunities for his students, all students.
I conducted observations in what Rios (1996) called the cultural contexts of the
teacher’s classrooms as well as other contexts in the school building. I also analyzed
documents and artifacts and conducted interviews with the teacher. Throughout the
study, I attended and observed the teacher’s classes, attended other school-related
activities, events, and spaces such as the Honor Roll Assembly, the library, and the
cafeteria. I wanted to learn as much as possible about the context of the school to
provide rich and deep details about the nature of the school, its culture, and the
teacher. I wanted to know what life was like for the teacher in the study, other
teachers, and students not only in the classroom but also in other locations in the
school. In short, I attempted to gauge, from a general perspective, the culture of
Bridge Middle School as I attempted to understand how the teacher in the study was
able to build cultural competence.
Typically, I was in the school for half of a day once per week. On some
occasions, I was in the school 2 days. When I was not able to visit the school, the
teacher shared his plans and related materials with me to help me ‘‘stay current’’ and
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to gain an understanding and knowledge base relative to his work, thinking, and
development. Although I participated in some of the classroom tasks, I was more of
an observer than a participant. In some cases, I participated in group discussions and
assisted with some minor laboratory experiment, for instance. Most of the time,
however, I observed and recorded field notes in my field notebook related to the
interactions I observed between Mr. Hall and his students.
I conducted semi-structured interviews (Denzin & Lincoln 1994; Seidman 1998)
with the teacher individually, which were tape-recorded, transcribed, and hand
coded; these interviews lasted 1–2 h. Although not tape-recorded or transcribed, I
conducted countless informal interviews with the teacher where I recorded notes in
my field notebook. Interviews typically took place during the teacher’s lunch hour
or planning block. The hand coded analysis followed a recursive, thematic process;
as interviews and observations progressed, I used analytic induction and reasoning
to develop thematic categories. What is outlined in the subsequent sections of this
article are representative of the kinds of information shared with me and that I
observed from the participant. Because findings were based largely on both
observations and interviews, the patterns of thematic findings emerged from
multiple data sources, resulting in triangulation. This triangulation was central in
data analysis. For instance, when the teacher repeated a point several times
throughout the study, this became what I called a pattern. When what the teacher
articulated during interviews also became evident in his actions or in his students’
actions, this resulted in what I called a triangulational pattern.
Bridge Middle School
Constructed in 1954, Bridge Middle School is an urban school in a relatively large
city in the southeastern region of the United States. According to a Bridge County
real estate agent, houses in the community sell for between $120,000 and $175,000.
There are also a considerable number of rental houses zoned to the school. Many of
the neighborhood students from higher socio-economic backgrounds and who are
zoned to Bridge attend private and independent schools in the city rather than attend
Bridge Middle School.5 A larger number of students from lower socio-economic
backgrounds attend the school. Bridge Middle School is considered a Title I school,
which means that the school receives additional federal funds to assist students with
instructional and related resources. During the 2006–2007 academic-year, Bridge
Middle School accommodated approximately 354 students. The most recent data
available regarding student demographics (2005–2006) indicated that 59.8% of the
students at Bridge were African American, 5.6% Hispanic American, 31.6% White,
.3% American Indian, and 2.8% Asian American, a truly diverse learning
environment at least in terms of racial and ethnic diversity. The free and reduced
lunch rate increased over the last four to 5 years, between the 2002 and 2006
academic years: 64–79%, respectively. In 2006, there were 27 teachers at the school
with 45% of the faculty being African American and 55% being White. Seven of the
5
The practice of students attending magnet, private, and independent schools rather than their zoned
schools was very common in the district.
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Hispanic-
African-
Total # of
White
American
59.8%
Asian-American
American-Indian
Students
American
31.6%
5.6%
2.8%
0.3%
354
Fig. 2 Students at bridge middle school 2006–2007
Ethnic Background
African American
White
Percentage
45%
55%
Fig. 3 Teachers at bridge middle school, 2006–2007
Fig. 4 Free and reduced lunch
2002
Increase
2006
64%
15%
79%
teachers were male and twenty were female. Figures 2, 3, and 4 capture and
summarize these important data regarding the school culture.
I selected Bridge Middle School because it was known in the district as one of the
‘‘better’’ middle schools in the urban area—relatively speaking. For instance, I
asked practicing teachers enrolled in my classes at the university to community
nominate (Ladson-Billings 1994) what I called ‘‘strong’’ and some of the ‘‘better’’
urban schools. Bridge Middle School was consistently nominated. People in the
supermarket would also mention Bridge as one of the better schools in the district
upon my queries. When I met with a school official at the district office in order to
gain entry into a strong urban school that had celebrated some success, he also
suggested Bridge as a place to work.
Bridge Middle School is known for competitive basketball, wrestling, track, and
football teams. The school building is brick, and windows at the school are usually
open during the summer and spring seasons. There is a buzzer at the main entrance
to the school. Visitors ring the bell, are identified by a camera, and are allowed in by
one of the administrative assistants in the main office. When I visited the school, I
signed a logbook located in the main office and would proceed to the teacher’s
classrooms, to the cafeteria, or to the library. During my first month of conducting
this research (September, 2005), one of the hall monitors insisted that I go back to
the main office to get a red name badge, so I could be identified as a visitor/
researcher. They were serious about safety at the school. The floors in the hallways
of the school were spotless. There was no writing or graffiti on the walls. Especially
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during the month of February (2006 and 2007), Black history/heritage/celebration
posters and bulletin boards occupied nearly all the wall space in the hallways.
Mr. Hall
The teacher in this study, Mr. Hall, is a White male science teacher who had been
teaching for 3 years at Bridge Middle School. In 2008, Mr. Hall was nominated and
selected by his colleagues as the Teacher of the Year for Bridge Middle School—a
major feat for a teacher in the profession for so few years. Mr. Hall always dressed
in blue jeans or khakis and a polo-style shirt. Throughout my 2 years of study at
Bridge Middle School, I never saw, witnessed, or observed Mr. Hall taking a break.
During his planning block, he was in his classroom preparing for the next class:
cleaning lab supplies, grading papers, or writing on the board. During an assembly
that I attended, Mr. Hall sat with his class and was constantly making sure that
students were being respectful to their classmates while other teachers seemed to
take a bit of a break.
Building Cultural Competence
In this section, I discuss what I was able to determine about Mr. Hall’s experiences
in building cultural competence at Bridget Middle School. I attempt to display the
mindset and the practices that were integral to this process. I attempt to capture Mr.
Hall’s mindset in light of Ladson-Billings’ (2006) supposition that culturally
relevant pedagogy is more about a way of being than a specified set of practices.
The practices I share seemed to be shaped by the reality that Mr. Hall’s mindset, his
thinking, and his belief systems shaped his ability to build cultural competence. I
focus on three recurrent themes that seemed to capture Mr. Hall’s mindset and
experiences related to building and practicing cultural competence:
•
•
•
Mr. Hall was able to build and sustain meaningful and authentic relationships
with his students, which allowed him to build cultural competence in the
classroom because the solid relationships allowed him to learn from/with his
students.
Mr. Hall recognized the multiple layers of identity among his students and
confronted matters of race with them. These interactions helped him build
cultural competence.
Mr. Hall perceived teaching as a communal affair; he worked to create a culture
of collaboration with colleagues and considered all students in the context his
responsibility—not only those in his classroom. Mr. Hall was not only learning
from students in his classroom, he was learning from those outside of his
classroom; he was learning from his colleagues, which also seemed important in
his building cultural competence.
Considered together, the above mindset and experiences seemed to shape Mr.
Hall’s cultural competence.
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Relationships
One important feature of Mr. Hall’s building of cultural competence centered
around relationships. He appeared to understand the importance of building and
sustaining relationships with his students at Bridge Middle School in order to
deepen his knowledge about his students. In many ways, the building of
relationships served as a precursor to learning what was necessary about others
(his students mostly) as well as himself. He worked to build solid and sustainable
relationships with each of his students as individuals as well as in the collective. In
an interview, he stated:
I think that you have to develop a relationship with each student. Every kid
that you have has a different story and if you show interest in what they’ve
(sic) gone through, they’re going to show interest in what you’re trying to
convey to them. Then they will show interest in what you’re doing [in the
classroom].
Paying careful attention to the needs of each student seemed paramount to
Mr. Hall’s philosophy, thinking, and practices related to relationship building. He
understood that there would be situations where he would need to address and learn
from students as individuals and also in the collective. For instance, the
development of cultural competence through his relationships with students served
as a way for Mr. Hall to keep students in the classroom rather than sending them out
with office referrals when (inevitably) conflicts emerged. In fact, Mr. Hall was
known for providing students with multiple opportunities for success and for
‘‘trusting’’ students to ‘‘get it right’’ the next time rather than referring students to
the office. He was not a teacher who was constantly sending students outside the
classroom due to conflicts and disruptions. For instance, Mr. Hall did not necessarily
send students to the office because they were tardy to class or due to other
infringements that can cause teachers to refer students to the office. When students
were not engaged in learning or when they misbehaved, he did not want to place
their destiny in the hands of another (see, Monroe & Obidah 2004, for more on this
topic)—such as in the hands of an administrator who had the power to suspend or
even expel a student from school. Again, his mindset and practices that were built
and sustained through his relationships with his students precluded his wanting to
jeopardize students’ education by referring the students to the office. Clearly, the
kind of learning that is necessary for learning and achievement is not taking place
when students are not in the classroom. Thus, Mr. Hall resolved to meet the students
were they were, work with them, and develop the kinds of relationships with the
students such that he could handle the pedagogical and management needs and
demands inherent in the space.
Still, such an approach, where Mr. Hall attempted to build and sustain
relationships with students by not giving up on them and refusing to readily refer
the students to the office was complicated. His decision to respond to students based
on the relationships he had established with them and their particular, specific, and
personal situation could cause some to question whether he was being equitable
when he dealt with the student based on the particular situation; he rejected a
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‘one-size-fits-all approach’ to teaching and learning because he had developed some
deep knowledge about the students themselves and their specific needs. How was
Mr. Hall able to be responsive to each student as an individual and how was his
responsiveness central to his building cultural competence? When asked how he
responded to people who questioned his approach—looking at each student, relying
on the relationships he had established with his students as individuals, and paying
special attention to the idiosyncrasies of the situation–, Mr. Hall shared:
Well I’d ask: who hasn’t gotten a second chance in life? I mean everybody
messes up and not everybody messes up at the same time. So I mean it’s a
different situation for everybody. I mean, I know there are times in my job that
I said the wrong thing, did the wrong thing, and…alarms didn’t go off, and the
swat team didn’t come in (my emphasis added)…People, my peers–people
above me pulled me aside and said: ‘Hey, you know, we don’t do it this way.’
You know I wasn’t terminated on the spot…You know I’m not going to [give
them failing] grades or hurt their self-esteem right there on the spot just
because they did it wrong that time…Everybody’s different, you know…We
are not robots…we can’t all just crank out the same stuff every time. It’s going
to take one kid five times to get it…and it’s going to take one kid one time.
Mr. Hall had developed care and concern for his students through his
relationships with them. He wanted to ensure that each of his students was able
to master the information he was presenting (whether it be subject matter or rules
about ways of conducting themselves), and he wanted the students to remain in the
classroom. In essence, Mr. Hall was developing relationships with his students by
not giving up on them, by not allowing the students to give up on themselves, and
by not sending the students out of the classroom immediately when they
‘‘misbehaved.’’ This means that he allowed his students multiple opportunities to
turn in work and that he would explain a concept repeatedly to make sure his
students, all students, were learning:
Maybe that’s bad—[that] I give so many second chances–that I care about
them too much, but I think it works for me. And I wouldn’t know how else to
do it. And I couldn’t be one of those who say: ‘uh oh Timmy you didn’t get
your homework done, well that’s your fifth zero.’ You know I couldn’t be like
that.
It is important to note that the students appeared to respect Mr. Hall. There were
not, based on my observations, an overwhelming number of (unhealthy) interruptions or cultural conflicts (Delpit 1995) that emerged in the classroom. The point is
that just because Mr. Hall gave second chances and worked to build solid
relationships with his students did not mean that the students took him for granted,
saw him as weak, or that they worked to provide counterproductive interruptions in
the classroom. To the contrary, it appeared that Mr. Hall’s approach resulted in the
reverse: the students realized that Mr. Hall was not going to allow students to turn in
work that did not demonstrate their best efforts conceptually and intellectually.
Moreover, the students realized that Mr. Hall was not going to allow them to ‘‘quit’’
or ‘‘give up.’’
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The students mattered to Mr. Hall, and this showed up in the curricula,
instructional, and management decisions he made. However, while there was not an
overwhelming number of conflicts and incongruence that occurred in the learning
context, there were times when Mr. Hall had conflicts with his students. It would be
misleading to suggest that Mr. Hall did not encounter problems in his classroom
context, as is the case in classrooms in all learning milieus. It is not the goal of this
article to present a romanticized version of what life was like for Mr. Hall at Bridge
Middle School. In a sense, the conflicts that emerged in the classroom were
foundational to the types of relationships he would eventually build with his
students. Mr. Hall’s ability to understand and work through the conflicts that he
encountered with his students was instrumental to his building cultural competence.
He needed to understand some of the differences and tensions between himself and
his students in order to gain cultural knowledge. Thus, conflict, in this sense, was
not a pejorative. By way of example, Mr. Hall expressed:
[There was a student]–He was a foot and a half taller than me, a big old guy.
He wanted to chitchat and talk about sports and basketball and stuff, and he
didn’t like me (sic) coming up to him telling him ‘‘get on task,’’ ‘‘get on task’’
[during labs] every 5 min. And one day he stood up to me and just went off.
And I went off [too]—you know—it’s like two brothers fighting. He let me
know what he was thinking. And I let him know what I was thinking, and we
went our separate ways…it took us about a week, but one morning he just
walked up to me, and said, ‘‘We’re cool now.’’ It was almost like, ‘‘I didn’t
know what happened.’’ I was cool from the minute he walked out the door.
That’s just me: I am going to tell you how I feel, what I didn’t like, and I am
done.
Mr. Hall explained that he had to constantly set the parameters in the classroom
so that students realized that he wanted and expected them to do their best work at
all times while he also was being open to his students and providing them multiple
opportunities for success. At the same time, he was not willing to negotiate learning
for nonsense in the classroom. Because Mr. Hall demonstrated a level of care that
the students could sense, he was able to develop relationships with them that
allowed for conflicts to emerge such as the one described above when the student
wanted to talk about sports rather than focus on lab work. At the same time, Mr.
Hall would not allow the conflict to overshadow what was most important: students’
opportunities to learn in the classroom. Thus, in the example above, the student was
willing to give Mr. Hall a second chance when he walked up to Mr. Hall declaring:
‘‘we are cool now.’’ Mr. Hall had modeled the importance of giving others’ another
opportunity, and the student adopted this approach with Mr. Hall.
While conflict was inevitable and even necessary for Mr. Hall to build
relationships and consequently cultural competence, Mr. Hall shared examples of
how building relationships did not always naturally occur. He asserted:
I had a kid named Paul, and last year, he was one of the biggest troublemakers
that I had. I couldn’t get him to do homework. I couldn’t get him to study for a
test or anything. And this year he made the basketball team and made the
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football team. And every week I was asking him ‘Hey how you doing [with
basketball]? Did you score a basket?’ What did you do in the game?
As for the relationship between Mr. Hall and Paul, it took some serious work–
relationship building–in order to increase Paul’s engagement, participation and
ultimately learning in the science classroom. Mr. Hall took an interest in Paul
outside of the school (in athletics) in order to build a solid relationship with Paul and
ultimately to get him more involved with his academics. He stated
I’ve gone down to a couple of basketball practices and played one on one
against him [with Paul], and he missed two assignments the whole year in
homework. And his grade–average wise last year is up about fifteen points.
He’s gone from being a C student in my class to being an A student. He’s just
one example of how you show interest in a kid and how their output goes up in
your class.
Mr. Hall clearly credits his student’s (Paul) increased participation, engagement,
and grade in the classroom to the building and maintenance of a solid relationship
with the student, one that demonstrated an interest in the life world of Paul in
basketball. Mr. Hall was building cultural competence about his student and was
also learning about ways to connect with other students in similar situations.
Moreover, in building cultural knowledge about Paul, Mr. Hall took some
responsibility for Paul’s lack of engagement in his class, and he worked to
circumvent this by building a relationship with Paul outside of the classroom on the
basketball court. Mr. Hall realized that in some cases, he would have to go beyond
the walls of the classroom to build a meaningful relationship with the student in
order to connect to and converge with the students in the classroom. As for Mr. Hall,
he attended Paul’s basketball practices and played against him one-on-one. The idea
is that Paul probably began to see Mr. Hall in a different light on the basketball
court; he started to see Mr. Hall as a real person who could shoot basketball and also
who demonstrated enough care to take time out after school to play him in a few
basketball contests. In addition to relationships, Mr. Hall’s ability to recognize the
various layers of his and his students’ identity and to confront and address the
salience of race in his classroom also contributed to his cultural competence.
Recognizing Identity, Confronting Race
Mr. Hall talked about how when he first became a teacher at the school, the students
‘‘didn’t know’’ him. In his words,
[The students would say:] ‘I don’t care who you are. I don’t know you.’ And
then after year one you’ve had half of them…And they’re like okay well I
know he’s going to do this if I do this. So they start telling the seventh graders,
Mr. Hall is going to get you if you do this…And then year three, you have
more of them. And your reputation has now spread down to the sixth graders.
As Mr. Hall explained, students were less likely to learn from the teacher or to
become engaged in the learning opportunities available in the classroom if they felt
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that they ‘‘did not know’’ the teacher and if they did not feel that their teacher knew
them as students with multiple and varied identities. Based on my observations and
even in conversations with students in other classes and in other contexts in the
school such as in the cafeteria, Mr. Hall was a teacher whom the students felt like
they had come to know. Of course, this coming to know took time as Mr. Hall was
building cultural competence based on what the students expressed to him and also
based on what they expected of and from him: the students expected Mr. Hall to
‘‘know’’ them, and they needed to ‘‘know’’ Mr. Hall. Based on what he began to
notice about the culture and expectations of his students, Mr. Hall believed that he
had to facilitate opportunities for the students to get to know him. For instance, in
the cafeteria, I would ask the students if they were taking a course from Mr. Hall,
and I would ask for students’ impressions of him, his teaching, and his class in
general. The students would tell me what was on their minds about Mr. Hall (and
also other teachers—with very little probing), both positive and negative. As for Mr.
Hall, the students saw him as ‘‘cool’’ and a ‘‘good teacher’’ as they had gotten to
know him. At the same time, they perceived his class as ‘‘hard’’ but ‘‘fun.’’ The
students would comment on how Mr. Hall always watched the Discovery Channel,
and the students had developed an appreciation for the channel as well. In class,
students quite often would reference a recent episode from the network, and
Mr. Hall was right there with them, detailing the specifics of an episode and
providing relevance to the science curriculum. The students and Mr. Hall had found
a television channel that was somewhat of a bridge to learning in the classroom. In
essence, Mr. Hall was able to build cultural competence based on his willingness to
listen to and hear from students who complained that they did not ‘‘know’’ him. He
discovered that many of his students were not willing to learn from him because
they did not feel that they knew him and accordingly felt disconnected to him and
the classroom experience.
Personal narratives became a central feature of Mr. Hall’s practices to build
cultural competence regarding his students and also for students to learn more about
him. Mr. Hall shared personal stories with his students in his classes about his
family—namely his wife and children to provide them somewhat of a window into
his life. He shared aspects of his personal identity with his students and perhaps
consequently students were willing to share dimensions of their personal
experiences and identities with him. Again, he needed the st
DOI 10.1007/s11256-009-0143-0
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in a Diverse Urban
Classroom
H. Richard Milner IV
Published online: 9 January 2010
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract While it is well established that the ability of teachers to build cultural
competence is a critical aspect of their work especially in urban and highly diverse
settings, the kinds of experiences that help them build cultural competence is less
clear. The author attempts to contribute to this void by showcasing a White, science
teacher’s experiences in building cultural competence in a highly diverse urban
school. Culturally relevant pedagogy is used as an analytic tool to explain and
uncover the ways in which the teacher develops cultural knowledge to maximize
student learning opportunities. The basic premise of the article is that this White
teacher was able to build cultural congruence with his highly diverse learners
because he developed cultural competence and concurrently deepened his knowledge and understanding of himself and his practices. Practicing teachers, teacher
educators, and researchers are provided a picture of how the teacher builds relationships with his students, how he deepens his knowledge about how identity and
race manifest in the urban context, and how he implements a communal and
collective approach to his work as he builds cultural knowledge and cultural
competence about himself, his students, and his practices.
Keywords Culturally relevant pedagogy Culture Teaching Urban
Race Context Teacher Diverse Science
H. R. Milner IV (&)
Department of Teaching and Learning, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Box 230,
230 Appleton Place, Nashville, TN 37203-5721, USA
e-mail: rich.milner@vanderbilt.edu
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Introduction
In this article, I use the conceptual framework, culturally relevant pedagogy,1 as an
analytic tool to examine the tensions, opportunities, and successes inherent in a
White science teacher’s classroom practices in a diverse urban2 school. In
particular, I revisit one of the tenets, cultural competence, of Ladson-Billings’
(2006) conceptualization of culturally relevant pedagogy in an attempt to build on
and from it. The overall research questions that guided this study were: how was this
teacher, Mr. Hall,3 able to build cultural competence in ways that allowed him to
(more) effectively teach his students? And in what ways does Mr. Hall develop
relationships with his students inside and outside the classroom to build cultural
competence? The basic thrust of the argument suggests that there are important
features and decisions of this teacher—how he is able to bridge experiences with his
students, to make important decisions on their behalf, and to work toward cultural
competence—that can shed light on the complexities inherent in a White teacher
teaching in a highly diverse urban context. Moreover, although Ladson-Billings
stressed the fostering and maintenance of cultural competence for students, this
study stresses the importance of teachers developing cultural competence to
maximize learning opportunities in the classroom.
In an important chapter, Ladson-Billings (2006) shared the following regarding a
representative interaction she had with a prospective teacher. The prospective
teacher expressed the following concern to Ladson-Billings: ‘‘Everybody keeps
telling us about multicultural education, but nobody is telling us how to do it!’’
(p. 30). Perplexing to many of those in her audience, Ladson-Billings’ response was
‘‘Even if we could tell you how to do it, I would not want us to tell you how to do it’’
(p. 39). For Ladson-Billings, there were at least two important lessons inherent to
her response to the prospective teacher who queried about how to ‘‘do’’
multicultural education and essentially culturally relevant teaching. For one,
teachers teach a range of students who bring an enormous range of diversity into the
learning environment. There are no one-size-fits-all approaches to the work of
teaching. Teachers must be mindful of whom they are teaching and the range of
needs that students will bring into the classroom. Moreover, the social context that
shapes students’ experiences is vast and complexly integral to what decisions are
made, how decisions are made, and why. In short, the nature of students’ needs will
1
The term culturally relevant pedagogy is often used to discuss or describe the theory of culturally
relevant teaching while the term culturally relevant teaching is used to describe the practice of the theory.
I will use both, pedagogy and teaching, interchangeably throughout this article because I recognize the
interrelated nature of both.
2
There is not a static definition or meaning of the term ‘‘urban’’. Scholars define urban students, urban
environments, and urban education in varying ways. For instance, generally, urban education can be
equated with inner-city schools or large metropolitan regions. Weiner (2003) noted that the literature
paints a negative portrait of the urban context. She explained that lack of success in urban schools is often
described as a result of the ‘‘problems in students, their families, their culture, or their communities’’
(p. 305). To suggest that all urban schools, neighborhoods, people, and other-related contexts are
substandard would be unfairly inaccurate. There are some powerfully-rich knowledge, culture, and
opportunity inherent in urban spaces; yet these resources are too often ignored and/or underexplored.
3
Pseudonyms are used to mask the identity of the teacher, students, and district throughout this article.
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surely vary from year-to-year, from classroom-to-classroom, and from school-toschool.
A second point to Ladson-Billings’ response to the prospective teacher who
complained that she was not being told how to ‘‘do’’ multicultural education is that
no one tells us how to ‘‘do democracy’’ (Ladson-Billings 2006, p. 39); we just do it.
In a similar light, teachers who practice culturally relevant pedagogy do so because
it is consistent with what they believe and who they are. Teachers’ conceptions
guide their practices based on contextual realities and nuances inherent to and in
their work. Teachers practice culturally relevant pedagogy because they believe in
it, and they believe it is the right practice to foster, support, create, and enable
students’ learning opportunities. Similarly, teachers (people) practice democracy for
similar reasons. People are not told how to do democracy because democratic
principles are infiltrated throughout US society. Ladson-Billings suggested that
people practice democracy because they think and believe in its fundamental
principles and ideals. Thus, more than a set of principles, ideas, or predetermined
practices, the practice of culturally relevant pedagogy involves a state of being or
mindset that permeates teachers’ decision-making and related practices.
In the subsequent sections of this article, I elucidate and discuss what I mean by
culturally relevant pedagogy. Inherent in the discussion on culturally relevant
pedagogy is a focus on outcomes and the central tenets of the theory. I then explain
the methods employed in the study. The next section outlines the findings of the
study, and in the final section, I provide implications and conclusions.
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Researchers have made a compelling case for the importance of developing
culturally relevant curriculum and instruction for students, all students, in the P-12
classroom (cf., Foster 1997; Ladson-Billings 1994; Howard 2001). Gloria LadsonBillings (1992), the scholar responsible for conceptualizing culturally relevant
pedagogy, maintained that it is an approach that
serves to empower students to the point where they will be able to examine
critically educational content and process and ask what its role is in creating a
truly democratic and multicultural society. It uses the students’ culture to help
them create meaning and understand the world. Thus, not only academic
success, but also social and cultural success is emphasized. (my emphases
added) (p. 110)
The construct suggests that students develop a critical consciousness and that
they move beyond spaces where they simply or solely consume knowledge
without critically examining it. The idea is that teachers create learning
environments where students develop voice and perspective and are allowed to
participate (more fully) in the multiple discourses available in a learning context
by not only consuming information but also through helping to deconstruct and to
construct it (Freire 1998). Ladson-Billings (1994) further explained that culturally
relevant pedagogy
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uses student culture in order to maintain it and to transcend the negative
effects of the dominant culture. The negative effects are brought about, for
example, by not seeing one’s history, culture, or background represented in the
textbook or curriculum…culturally relevant teaching is a pedagogy that
empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by
using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes. (pp. 17–18)
Educators who create culturally relevant learning contexts are those who see
students’ culture as an asset, not a detriment to their success. Teachers actually use
student culture in their curriculum planning and implementation, and they allow
students to develop the skills to question how power structures are created and
maintained in US society. In this sense, the teacher is not the only, nor the main
arbiter of knowledge (McCutcheon 2002). Students are expected and empowered to
develop intellectually and socially in order to build skills to make meaningful and
transformative contributions to society. In essence, culturally relevant pedagogy is
an approach that helps students ‘‘see the contradictions and inequities’’ (LadsonBillings 1992, p. 382) that exist inside and outside of the classroom. Through
culturally relevant teaching, teachers prepare students with skills to question
inequity and to fight against the many isms and phobias that they encounter while
allowing students to build knowledge and to transfer what they have learned through
classroom instructional/learning opportunities to other experiences.
Outcomes of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
One important question regarding culturally relevant pedagogy has to do with the
relationship between culturally relevant pedagogy and student outcomes. That is,
what are student outcomes when teachers create learning environments and
pedagogical approaches that are shaped by and grounded in culturally relevant
pedagogy? The answer to this question is not one that, I believe, can be answered by
looking exclusively at students’ test score performance. Rather, the outcomes of
culturally relevant pedagogy seem to extend far beyond what might be measured on
a standardized exam. Grounded in Ladson-Billings ideology, as well as my own
research, student outcomes can be captured in at least three broad categories—
especially if readers are willing to think of student outcomes to be prevalent and
possible beyond traditional test score measures.
One outcome of students who experience culturally relevant pedagogy is
empowerment. Students are empowered to examine more intently what they are
learning, to create and to construct meaning, to contribute to the multiple
conversations in a classroom with agency, to succeed academically and socially, and
to gauge contradictions and inequities both in school and outside of school. In
addition, culturally relevant pedagogy allows students to see their culture in the
curriculum and instruction, and students are encouraged to maintain it. This idea of
seeing oneself in the curriculum and through instruction helps students understand
the important ways in which their culture been contributed to various genres of
curriculum content and also to the fabric of US society. And third, students who
experience culturally relevant instruction are challenged through learning
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Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
EMPOWERS students to:
•
Examine educational content and processes
•
create and construct and deconstruct meaning
•
succeed academically and socially
•
see contradictions and inequities in local and larger communities
INCORPORATES student culture in:
•
curriculum and teaching
•
maintaining it
•
transcending negative effects of the dominant culture
CREATES classroom contexts that:
•
are challenging and innovative
•
focus on student learning (and consequently academic achievement)
•
build cultural competence
•
link curriculum and instruction to sociopolitical realities
Fig. 1 Outcomes of culturally relevant pedagogy
opportunities that are innovative and that allow them to meaningfully understand
the sociopolitical nature of society and how society works. In Fig. 1, above, I
attempt to capture and summarize some of the important outcomes—beyond results
on a standardized exam—of culturally relevant pedagogy.
Tenets of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Three interrelated tenets shape Ladson-Billings’ conception of culturally relevant
pedagogy: academic achievement, sociopolitical consciousness, and cultural
competence. Although Ladson-Billings has outlined the three main features of
the theory, the theory has grown, developed, and evolved in some important ways.
The theory—similar to theoretical orientations in education and other disciplines—
has taken on multiple and varied meanings, depending on who is using it and for
what purpose. Ladson-Billings (2006) expressed her regret for using the term
academic achievement when she first conceptualized the theory partly because
educators immediately equated academic achievement with student test scores. It is
important to note that, as outlined in the previous section on outcomes, I have
purposely expanded my conception of the outcome notion. What Ladson-Billings
actually envisioned was that culturally relevant pedagogy would allow for and
facilitate student learning: ‘‘what it is that students actually know and are able to do
as a result of pedagogical interactions with skilled teachers’’ (Ladson-Billings 2006,
p. 34). Academic achievement, then, is about student learning. The idea is that if
students are learning then they will be able to produce the types of outcomes, such
as on standardized (high stakes) examinations, that allow them to succeed
academically.
A second tenet of culturally relevant pedagogy according to Ladson-Billings is
sociopolitical consciousness. Sociopolitical consciousness is about the micro-,
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meso-, and macro-level matters that have a bearing on teachers’ and students’ lived
experiences and educational interactions. For instance, the idea that the unemployment rate plays a meaningful role in national debates as well as in local realities for
teachers and students would be centralized and incorporated into curricula and
instructional opportunities to enable both teachers and students’ levels of
consciousness. Ladson-Billings (2006) stressed that this tenet is not about teachers
pushing their own political and social agendas in the classroom. Rather, she
indicated that sociopolitical consciousness is about helping ‘‘students use the
various skills they learn to better understand and critique their social position and
context’’ (p. 37).
It is Ladson-Billings’ third tenet, cultural competence, that shapes the focus of
this article. For Ladson-Billings, cultural competence is not necessarily about
helping teachers develop a set of static information about differing cultural groups
in order for teachers to develop some sensitivity towards another culture. Rather, for
Ladson-Billings, cultural competence is about student acquisition of cultural
knowledge regarding their own cultural ways and systems of knowing society and
thus expanding their knowledge to understand broader cultural ways and systems of
knowing. Such a position, Ladson-Billings explained, with a focus on cultural
competence being on students runs counter to the ways in which other disciplines
such as medicine, clergy and social work may think about and conceptualize
cultural competence. In medicine, for instance, physicians are sometimes trained to
develop a set of information about differing cultural groups to complement their
ability to work with people who may be very different from them. For instance, it
seems viable and quite logical for younger physicians to be educated to work with
older patients. Bedside manner for physicians might also be enhanced when they
develop knowledge about people living in poverty or people from a different racial
or ethnic background from the doctor. The notion that physicians are attempting to
deepen their knowledge-base about cultural groups for which they have very little
knowledge and understanding can serve as essential knowledge for physicians as
long as they realize the enormous range of diversity inherent within and among
various cultural groups of people.
Where race is concerned, people sometimes misuse the term culture by
collapsing all individuals in a particular race together. To illuminate, the term
African American4 denotes an ethnic group of people—not a singular, static cultural
group; there is a wide range of diversity among and between African Americans
although there are some consistencies as well. African Americans share a history of
slavery, Jim Crow, and other forms of systemic discrimination and racism that bind
the group. At the same time, African Americans possess a shared history of spiritual
grounding, tenacity, and resilience through some of the most horrific situations that
human beings have had to endure. However, while there are shared experiences,
there are also many differences between and among African Americans. Take, for
example, the variance between former Secretary of State Condelesa Rice and
current National Football League (NFL) player, Michael Vick (currently playing for
the Philadelphia Eagles). The differences between these two African Americans are
4
The terms African American and Black will be used interchangeably throughout this article.
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significantly greater than and beyond those of gender or perhaps political affiliation.
While Rice and Vick are both African American and share some similarities
between them, there are countless differences as well. A risk of such training, where
physicians acquire knowledge about varying cultural groups toward cultural
competence, is reifying stereotypes (Ladson-Billings 2006).
Thus, what Ladson-Billings means by cultural competence is ‘‘helping students
to recognize and honor their own cultural beliefs and practices while acquiring
access to the wider culture, where they are likely to have a chance of improving
their socioeconomic status and making informed decisions about the lives they wish
to lead’’ (p. 36). In culturally relevant pedagogy, cultural competence seems to
concern the ability of teachers to help foster student learning about themselves,
others, and how the world works in order to be able to function effectively in it and
also how to contribute to their communities. Building cultural knowledge, for
students, from Ladson-Billings’ perception also has a goal of self and collective
knowledge in order to challenge and transform power structures. The idea is that in
order to have a seat at the table and to be able to participate in discourses of those in
power (Freire 1998), one must deeply understand who those in power are, and they
must understand their own relationship to those in power.
In this article, I build on this notion of cultural knowledge and shift the focus
from the specified focus on students to that of teachers. In other words, I argue that
teachers need to build cultural competence in order to effectively teach their
students, particularly in urban spaces. In the subsequent sections of this article, I
analyze the practices of a White, male, science teacher in his attempts to build
cultural competence in a highly diverse urban school. I turn next to discuss my own
positioning with/in the study.
Situating Myself with/in the Study
Throughout the representation and discussion of the evidence from this study, I use
first person. I use first person because, in a sense, I am telling my own story as much
as I am reporting on the practices of Mr. Hall. As an African American, male
researcher and a former secondary English teacher in a predominantly Black
secondary school in the US who has attempted to build (and who continues to build)
cultural competence, I wanted to understand how this teacher was able to build
cultural competence with his students with a goal of maximizing students’
opportunities to learn. Moreover, as an African American male teacher educator and
researcher, I consistently struggle with how to address, study, and write about race
in my work. Because I am studying a White teacher’s practices and capacities to
build his cultural competence in this study, I attempt to explain some of the tensions
embedded in the practices of studying a participant outside my own racial and
ethnic background. Is it appropriate for me to study matters of race with this
teacher?
In short, I am attentive to how I situate and position my own privileges,
oppression, and assumptions in the process and outcomes of this research focused
on someone outside my racial and ethnic background. I have attempted to address
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these tensions of positionality and my research elsewhere (Milner 2007). As I was
attempting to understand Mr. Hall’s experiences in developing cultural competence,
I was also attempting to more fully and meaningfully understand my own, both as a
high school teacher and currently as a teacher educator/researcher. To be clear, I
remained true to the data and evidence in the study, but I also make explicit my
goals, rationales, and thinking in posing questions and during observations. I agree
with Kerl (2002), who wrote, ‘‘We cannot necessarily know what is true or even real
outside our own understanding of it, our own worldview, our own meanings that are
embedded in who we are’’ (p. 138) as outsiders and insiders. In the next section, I
discuss, in more depth, my decisions and rationales in selecting the research
methods, school, and the participant in the study.
Methods
Building on and from the qualitative research of others (Howard 2001; LadsonBillings 1994), I have been conducting research at Bridge Middle School for two
academic years, approximately 19 months. I began conducting research at Bridge in
September of 2005. The teacher in the study was nominated by the principal in the
school. Broadly, I wanted to learn about, study, and hear the stories of teachers at
Bridge Middle School and to understand and describe how and why teachers
succeeded there. As my time at Bridge evolved, I focused in on how teachers
developed cultural knowledge and competence to teach effectively in the school.
Accordingly, I was also interested in the teacher’s struggles; what issues did he
experience in the school and in his classroom with students that can shed light on
the complexities of teaching and learning in an urban and diverse school? In what
ways were this teacher’s struggles and successes contributory to his building of
cultural competence? Moreover, I was interested in how the teacher managed his
classrooms, how he was able to get parents involved, and how (in terms of
curriculum and pedagogy) the teacher was able to make decisions about learning
opportunities for his students, all students.
I conducted observations in what Rios (1996) called the cultural contexts of the
teacher’s classrooms as well as other contexts in the school building. I also analyzed
documents and artifacts and conducted interviews with the teacher. Throughout the
study, I attended and observed the teacher’s classes, attended other school-related
activities, events, and spaces such as the Honor Roll Assembly, the library, and the
cafeteria. I wanted to learn as much as possible about the context of the school to
provide rich and deep details about the nature of the school, its culture, and the
teacher. I wanted to know what life was like for the teacher in the study, other
teachers, and students not only in the classroom but also in other locations in the
school. In short, I attempted to gauge, from a general perspective, the culture of
Bridge Middle School as I attempted to understand how the teacher in the study was
able to build cultural competence.
Typically, I was in the school for half of a day once per week. On some
occasions, I was in the school 2 days. When I was not able to visit the school, the
teacher shared his plans and related materials with me to help me ‘‘stay current’’ and
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to gain an understanding and knowledge base relative to his work, thinking, and
development. Although I participated in some of the classroom tasks, I was more of
an observer than a participant. In some cases, I participated in group discussions and
assisted with some minor laboratory experiment, for instance. Most of the time,
however, I observed and recorded field notes in my field notebook related to the
interactions I observed between Mr. Hall and his students.
I conducted semi-structured interviews (Denzin & Lincoln 1994; Seidman 1998)
with the teacher individually, which were tape-recorded, transcribed, and hand
coded; these interviews lasted 1–2 h. Although not tape-recorded or transcribed, I
conducted countless informal interviews with the teacher where I recorded notes in
my field notebook. Interviews typically took place during the teacher’s lunch hour
or planning block. The hand coded analysis followed a recursive, thematic process;
as interviews and observations progressed, I used analytic induction and reasoning
to develop thematic categories. What is outlined in the subsequent sections of this
article are representative of the kinds of information shared with me and that I
observed from the participant. Because findings were based largely on both
observations and interviews, the patterns of thematic findings emerged from
multiple data sources, resulting in triangulation. This triangulation was central in
data analysis. For instance, when the teacher repeated a point several times
throughout the study, this became what I called a pattern. When what the teacher
articulated during interviews also became evident in his actions or in his students’
actions, this resulted in what I called a triangulational pattern.
Bridge Middle School
Constructed in 1954, Bridge Middle School is an urban school in a relatively large
city in the southeastern region of the United States. According to a Bridge County
real estate agent, houses in the community sell for between $120,000 and $175,000.
There are also a considerable number of rental houses zoned to the school. Many of
the neighborhood students from higher socio-economic backgrounds and who are
zoned to Bridge attend private and independent schools in the city rather than attend
Bridge Middle School.5 A larger number of students from lower socio-economic
backgrounds attend the school. Bridge Middle School is considered a Title I school,
which means that the school receives additional federal funds to assist students with
instructional and related resources. During the 2006–2007 academic-year, Bridge
Middle School accommodated approximately 354 students. The most recent data
available regarding student demographics (2005–2006) indicated that 59.8% of the
students at Bridge were African American, 5.6% Hispanic American, 31.6% White,
.3% American Indian, and 2.8% Asian American, a truly diverse learning
environment at least in terms of racial and ethnic diversity. The free and reduced
lunch rate increased over the last four to 5 years, between the 2002 and 2006
academic years: 64–79%, respectively. In 2006, there were 27 teachers at the school
with 45% of the faculty being African American and 55% being White. Seven of the
5
The practice of students attending magnet, private, and independent schools rather than their zoned
schools was very common in the district.
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Hispanic-
African-
Total # of
White
American
59.8%
Asian-American
American-Indian
Students
American
31.6%
5.6%
2.8%
0.3%
354
Fig. 2 Students at bridge middle school 2006–2007
Ethnic Background
African American
White
Percentage
45%
55%
Fig. 3 Teachers at bridge middle school, 2006–2007
Fig. 4 Free and reduced lunch
2002
Increase
2006
64%
15%
79%
teachers were male and twenty were female. Figures 2, 3, and 4 capture and
summarize these important data regarding the school culture.
I selected Bridge Middle School because it was known in the district as one of the
‘‘better’’ middle schools in the urban area—relatively speaking. For instance, I
asked practicing teachers enrolled in my classes at the university to community
nominate (Ladson-Billings 1994) what I called ‘‘strong’’ and some of the ‘‘better’’
urban schools. Bridge Middle School was consistently nominated. People in the
supermarket would also mention Bridge as one of the better schools in the district
upon my queries. When I met with a school official at the district office in order to
gain entry into a strong urban school that had celebrated some success, he also
suggested Bridge as a place to work.
Bridge Middle School is known for competitive basketball, wrestling, track, and
football teams. The school building is brick, and windows at the school are usually
open during the summer and spring seasons. There is a buzzer at the main entrance
to the school. Visitors ring the bell, are identified by a camera, and are allowed in by
one of the administrative assistants in the main office. When I visited the school, I
signed a logbook located in the main office and would proceed to the teacher’s
classrooms, to the cafeteria, or to the library. During my first month of conducting
this research (September, 2005), one of the hall monitors insisted that I go back to
the main office to get a red name badge, so I could be identified as a visitor/
researcher. They were serious about safety at the school. The floors in the hallways
of the school were spotless. There was no writing or graffiti on the walls. Especially
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during the month of February (2006 and 2007), Black history/heritage/celebration
posters and bulletin boards occupied nearly all the wall space in the hallways.
Mr. Hall
The teacher in this study, Mr. Hall, is a White male science teacher who had been
teaching for 3 years at Bridge Middle School. In 2008, Mr. Hall was nominated and
selected by his colleagues as the Teacher of the Year for Bridge Middle School—a
major feat for a teacher in the profession for so few years. Mr. Hall always dressed
in blue jeans or khakis and a polo-style shirt. Throughout my 2 years of study at
Bridge Middle School, I never saw, witnessed, or observed Mr. Hall taking a break.
During his planning block, he was in his classroom preparing for the next class:
cleaning lab supplies, grading papers, or writing on the board. During an assembly
that I attended, Mr. Hall sat with his class and was constantly making sure that
students were being respectful to their classmates while other teachers seemed to
take a bit of a break.
Building Cultural Competence
In this section, I discuss what I was able to determine about Mr. Hall’s experiences
in building cultural competence at Bridget Middle School. I attempt to display the
mindset and the practices that were integral to this process. I attempt to capture Mr.
Hall’s mindset in light of Ladson-Billings’ (2006) supposition that culturally
relevant pedagogy is more about a way of being than a specified set of practices.
The practices I share seemed to be shaped by the reality that Mr. Hall’s mindset, his
thinking, and his belief systems shaped his ability to build cultural competence. I
focus on three recurrent themes that seemed to capture Mr. Hall’s mindset and
experiences related to building and practicing cultural competence:
•
•
•
Mr. Hall was able to build and sustain meaningful and authentic relationships
with his students, which allowed him to build cultural competence in the
classroom because the solid relationships allowed him to learn from/with his
students.
Mr. Hall recognized the multiple layers of identity among his students and
confronted matters of race with them. These interactions helped him build
cultural competence.
Mr. Hall perceived teaching as a communal affair; he worked to create a culture
of collaboration with colleagues and considered all students in the context his
responsibility—not only those in his classroom. Mr. Hall was not only learning
from students in his classroom, he was learning from those outside of his
classroom; he was learning from his colleagues, which also seemed important in
his building cultural competence.
Considered together, the above mindset and experiences seemed to shape Mr.
Hall’s cultural competence.
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Relationships
One important feature of Mr. Hall’s building of cultural competence centered
around relationships. He appeared to understand the importance of building and
sustaining relationships with his students at Bridge Middle School in order to
deepen his knowledge about his students. In many ways, the building of
relationships served as a precursor to learning what was necessary about others
(his students mostly) as well as himself. He worked to build solid and sustainable
relationships with each of his students as individuals as well as in the collective. In
an interview, he stated:
I think that you have to develop a relationship with each student. Every kid
that you have has a different story and if you show interest in what they’ve
(sic) gone through, they’re going to show interest in what you’re trying to
convey to them. Then they will show interest in what you’re doing [in the
classroom].
Paying careful attention to the needs of each student seemed paramount to
Mr. Hall’s philosophy, thinking, and practices related to relationship building. He
understood that there would be situations where he would need to address and learn
from students as individuals and also in the collective. For instance, the
development of cultural competence through his relationships with students served
as a way for Mr. Hall to keep students in the classroom rather than sending them out
with office referrals when (inevitably) conflicts emerged. In fact, Mr. Hall was
known for providing students with multiple opportunities for success and for
‘‘trusting’’ students to ‘‘get it right’’ the next time rather than referring students to
the office. He was not a teacher who was constantly sending students outside the
classroom due to conflicts and disruptions. For instance, Mr. Hall did not necessarily
send students to the office because they were tardy to class or due to other
infringements that can cause teachers to refer students to the office. When students
were not engaged in learning or when they misbehaved, he did not want to place
their destiny in the hands of another (see, Monroe & Obidah 2004, for more on this
topic)—such as in the hands of an administrator who had the power to suspend or
even expel a student from school. Again, his mindset and practices that were built
and sustained through his relationships with his students precluded his wanting to
jeopardize students’ education by referring the students to the office. Clearly, the
kind of learning that is necessary for learning and achievement is not taking place
when students are not in the classroom. Thus, Mr. Hall resolved to meet the students
were they were, work with them, and develop the kinds of relationships with the
students such that he could handle the pedagogical and management needs and
demands inherent in the space.
Still, such an approach, where Mr. Hall attempted to build and sustain
relationships with students by not giving up on them and refusing to readily refer
the students to the office was complicated. His decision to respond to students based
on the relationships he had established with them and their particular, specific, and
personal situation could cause some to question whether he was being equitable
when he dealt with the student based on the particular situation; he rejected a
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‘one-size-fits-all approach’ to teaching and learning because he had developed some
deep knowledge about the students themselves and their specific needs. How was
Mr. Hall able to be responsive to each student as an individual and how was his
responsiveness central to his building cultural competence? When asked how he
responded to people who questioned his approach—looking at each student, relying
on the relationships he had established with his students as individuals, and paying
special attention to the idiosyncrasies of the situation–, Mr. Hall shared:
Well I’d ask: who hasn’t gotten a second chance in life? I mean everybody
messes up and not everybody messes up at the same time. So I mean it’s a
different situation for everybody. I mean, I know there are times in my job that
I said the wrong thing, did the wrong thing, and…alarms didn’t go off, and the
swat team didn’t come in (my emphasis added)…People, my peers–people
above me pulled me aside and said: ‘Hey, you know, we don’t do it this way.’
You know I wasn’t terminated on the spot…You know I’m not going to [give
them failing] grades or hurt their self-esteem right there on the spot just
because they did it wrong that time…Everybody’s different, you know…We
are not robots…we can’t all just crank out the same stuff every time. It’s going
to take one kid five times to get it…and it’s going to take one kid one time.
Mr. Hall had developed care and concern for his students through his
relationships with them. He wanted to ensure that each of his students was able
to master the information he was presenting (whether it be subject matter or rules
about ways of conducting themselves), and he wanted the students to remain in the
classroom. In essence, Mr. Hall was developing relationships with his students by
not giving up on them, by not allowing the students to give up on themselves, and
by not sending the students out of the classroom immediately when they
‘‘misbehaved.’’ This means that he allowed his students multiple opportunities to
turn in work and that he would explain a concept repeatedly to make sure his
students, all students, were learning:
Maybe that’s bad—[that] I give so many second chances–that I care about
them too much, but I think it works for me. And I wouldn’t know how else to
do it. And I couldn’t be one of those who say: ‘uh oh Timmy you didn’t get
your homework done, well that’s your fifth zero.’ You know I couldn’t be like
that.
It is important to note that the students appeared to respect Mr. Hall. There were
not, based on my observations, an overwhelming number of (unhealthy) interruptions or cultural conflicts (Delpit 1995) that emerged in the classroom. The point is
that just because Mr. Hall gave second chances and worked to build solid
relationships with his students did not mean that the students took him for granted,
saw him as weak, or that they worked to provide counterproductive interruptions in
the classroom. To the contrary, it appeared that Mr. Hall’s approach resulted in the
reverse: the students realized that Mr. Hall was not going to allow students to turn in
work that did not demonstrate their best efforts conceptually and intellectually.
Moreover, the students realized that Mr. Hall was not going to allow them to ‘‘quit’’
or ‘‘give up.’’
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The students mattered to Mr. Hall, and this showed up in the curricula,
instructional, and management decisions he made. However, while there was not an
overwhelming number of conflicts and incongruence that occurred in the learning
context, there were times when Mr. Hall had conflicts with his students. It would be
misleading to suggest that Mr. Hall did not encounter problems in his classroom
context, as is the case in classrooms in all learning milieus. It is not the goal of this
article to present a romanticized version of what life was like for Mr. Hall at Bridge
Middle School. In a sense, the conflicts that emerged in the classroom were
foundational to the types of relationships he would eventually build with his
students. Mr. Hall’s ability to understand and work through the conflicts that he
encountered with his students was instrumental to his building cultural competence.
He needed to understand some of the differences and tensions between himself and
his students in order to gain cultural knowledge. Thus, conflict, in this sense, was
not a pejorative. By way of example, Mr. Hall expressed:
[There was a student]–He was a foot and a half taller than me, a big old guy.
He wanted to chitchat and talk about sports and basketball and stuff, and he
didn’t like me (sic) coming up to him telling him ‘‘get on task,’’ ‘‘get on task’’
[during labs] every 5 min. And one day he stood up to me and just went off.
And I went off [too]—you know—it’s like two brothers fighting. He let me
know what he was thinking. And I let him know what I was thinking, and we
went our separate ways…it took us about a week, but one morning he just
walked up to me, and said, ‘‘We’re cool now.’’ It was almost like, ‘‘I didn’t
know what happened.’’ I was cool from the minute he walked out the door.
That’s just me: I am going to tell you how I feel, what I didn’t like, and I am
done.
Mr. Hall explained that he had to constantly set the parameters in the classroom
so that students realized that he wanted and expected them to do their best work at
all times while he also was being open to his students and providing them multiple
opportunities for success. At the same time, he was not willing to negotiate learning
for nonsense in the classroom. Because Mr. Hall demonstrated a level of care that
the students could sense, he was able to develop relationships with them that
allowed for conflicts to emerge such as the one described above when the student
wanted to talk about sports rather than focus on lab work. At the same time, Mr.
Hall would not allow the conflict to overshadow what was most important: students’
opportunities to learn in the classroom. Thus, in the example above, the student was
willing to give Mr. Hall a second chance when he walked up to Mr. Hall declaring:
‘‘we are cool now.’’ Mr. Hall had modeled the importance of giving others’ another
opportunity, and the student adopted this approach with Mr. Hall.
While conflict was inevitable and even necessary for Mr. Hall to build
relationships and consequently cultural competence, Mr. Hall shared examples of
how building relationships did not always naturally occur. He asserted:
I had a kid named Paul, and last year, he was one of the biggest troublemakers
that I had. I couldn’t get him to do homework. I couldn’t get him to study for a
test or anything. And this year he made the basketball team and made the
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football team. And every week I was asking him ‘Hey how you doing [with
basketball]? Did you score a basket?’ What did you do in the game?
As for the relationship between Mr. Hall and Paul, it took some serious work–
relationship building–in order to increase Paul’s engagement, participation and
ultimately learning in the science classroom. Mr. Hall took an interest in Paul
outside of the school (in athletics) in order to build a solid relationship with Paul and
ultimately to get him more involved with his academics. He stated
I’ve gone down to a couple of basketball practices and played one on one
against him [with Paul], and he missed two assignments the whole year in
homework. And his grade–average wise last year is up about fifteen points.
He’s gone from being a C student in my class to being an A student. He’s just
one example of how you show interest in a kid and how their output goes up in
your class.
Mr. Hall clearly credits his student’s (Paul) increased participation, engagement,
and grade in the classroom to the building and maintenance of a solid relationship
with the student, one that demonstrated an interest in the life world of Paul in
basketball. Mr. Hall was building cultural competence about his student and was
also learning about ways to connect with other students in similar situations.
Moreover, in building cultural knowledge about Paul, Mr. Hall took some
responsibility for Paul’s lack of engagement in his class, and he worked to
circumvent this by building a relationship with Paul outside of the classroom on the
basketball court. Mr. Hall realized that in some cases, he would have to go beyond
the walls of the classroom to build a meaningful relationship with the student in
order to connect to and converge with the students in the classroom. As for Mr. Hall,
he attended Paul’s basketball practices and played against him one-on-one. The idea
is that Paul probably began to see Mr. Hall in a different light on the basketball
court; he started to see Mr. Hall as a real person who could shoot basketball and also
who demonstrated enough care to take time out after school to play him in a few
basketball contests. In addition to relationships, Mr. Hall’s ability to recognize the
various layers of his and his students’ identity and to confront and address the
salience of race in his classroom also contributed to his cultural competence.
Recognizing Identity, Confronting Race
Mr. Hall talked about how when he first became a teacher at the school, the students
‘‘didn’t know’’ him. In his words,
[The students would say:] ‘I don’t care who you are. I don’t know you.’ And
then after year one you’ve had half of them…And they’re like okay well I
know he’s going to do this if I do this. So they start telling the seventh graders,
Mr. Hall is going to get you if you do this…And then year three, you have
more of them. And your reputation has now spread down to the sixth graders.
As Mr. Hall explained, students were less likely to learn from the teacher or to
become engaged in the learning opportunities available in the classroom if they felt
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that they ‘‘did not know’’ the teacher and if they did not feel that their teacher knew
them as students with multiple and varied identities. Based on my observations and
even in conversations with students in other classes and in other contexts in the
school such as in the cafeteria, Mr. Hall was a teacher whom the students felt like
they had come to know. Of course, this coming to know took time as Mr. Hall was
building cultural competence based on what the students expressed to him and also
based on what they expected of and from him: the students expected Mr. Hall to
‘‘know’’ them, and they needed to ‘‘know’’ Mr. Hall. Based on what he began to
notice about the culture and expectations of his students, Mr. Hall believed that he
had to facilitate opportunities for the students to get to know him. For instance, in
the cafeteria, I would ask the students if they were taking a course from Mr. Hall,
and I would ask for students’ impressions of him, his teaching, and his class in
general. The students would tell me what was on their minds about Mr. Hall (and
also other teachers—with very little probing), both positive and negative. As for Mr.
Hall, the students saw him as ‘‘cool’’ and a ‘‘good teacher’’ as they had gotten to
know him. At the same time, they perceived his class as ‘‘hard’’ but ‘‘fun.’’ The
students would comment on how Mr. Hall always watched the Discovery Channel,
and the students had developed an appreciation for the channel as well. In class,
students quite often would reference a recent episode from the network, and
Mr. Hall was right there with them, detailing the specifics of an episode and
providing relevance to the science curriculum. The students and Mr. Hall had found
a television channel that was somewhat of a bridge to learning in the classroom. In
essence, Mr. Hall was able to build cultural competence based on his willingness to
listen to and hear from students who complained that they did not ‘‘know’’ him. He
discovered that many of his students were not willing to learn from him because
they did not feel that they knew him and accordingly felt disconnected to him and
the classroom experience.
Personal narratives became a central feature of Mr. Hall’s practices to build
cultural competence regarding his students and also for students to learn more about
him. Mr. Hall shared personal stories with his students in his classes about his
family—namely his wife and children to provide them somewhat of a window into
his life. He shared aspects of his personal identity with his students and perhaps
consequently students were willing to share dimensions of their personal
experiences and identities with him. Again, he needed the st