Breaking the Mold of Education for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students

Citation

Ordu, C. (2013), "Breaking the Mold of Education for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 51 No. 3, pp. 410-412. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578231311311546

Breaking the Mold of Education for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students is a new book in the Breaking the Mold series. Honigsfeld and Cohan coauthor other books in the series which cover an array of topics. One of the books in the series describes breaking the mold of school instruction and organization and focusses on innovative and successful practices for the twenty‐first century. The additional book in this series focusses on breaking the mold of preservice and inservice teacher education with a specific focus on innovative and successful practices for the twenty‐first century.

Breaking the Mold of Education for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students is divided into four sections consisting of a total of 30 chapters. Chapters in Section 1 are centered on social justice and advocacy. Chapter 1 presents an exploration of the current White House initiative on educational excellence for Hispanic Americans. This initiative was created to address educational opportunities for Hispanic Americans. Through interviews with four renowned Chicago‐based social justice researchers and leading practitioners, Chapter 2 offers a comparison between teacher's pet projects and real social justice teaching. Chapter 3 highlights how six educators work together to examine critical social justice issues by using the creation of urban studies cohorts stationed within an early childhood education program. These cohorts observe how the transformative power of social justice education and a concentration on equity can potentially change teacher education. A model for meeting the needs of youth identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer/questioning (LGBTIQ) is offered in Chapter 4 through highlighting The Alliance School as an example of restorative justice. A collaborative teaching and research approach to developing more culturally congruent pedagogies is presented in Chapter 5 and New Zealand is offered as an example to illustrate these approaches. Chapter 6 takes a counter approach to examining diversity, viewing it as strength in order to showcase how higher performing schools embrace diversity and are able to thrive as a result. Chapter 7, the last chapter in Section 1, offers a unique technique to teaching social justice and encourages a more engaged approach from preservice teachers to teach social justice in the classroom through using art to take action in the community.

Section 2 is comprised of eight chapters and focusses on the importance of family and community involvement as being an integral component of education reform in the twenty‐first century. Chapter 8 presents a compelling story of the creation of full service community schools in New York. The importance of tapping into the strengths of families of culturally and linguistically diverse students is described in Chapter 9 through the efforts made in a Texas school district. Strides of improving academic achievement and success for all students is explicated upon in Chapter 10 through describing the Family Leadership Initiative in Nevada. Chapter 11 presents a description of a school partnership program for Chinese immigrant parents who have children with disabilities. An innovative narrative is shared in Chapter 12 that highlights how an American Indian tribal community integrates their tribal practices and community values into the learning environments of the academy they founded. Chapter 13 showcases the efforts to promote culturally and linguistically responsive educational techniques and how these efforts enhance the social development and bicultural development amongst students in a Mexican‐US frontier community. An innovative mentoring program that utilizes adult role models from different cultural communities is presented in Chapter 14 to highlight how successful mentoring relationships are created with the students. In the final chapter in this section, Chapter 15 shares examples of creative teacher education projects that have been used in urban communities in Colombia and the USA in order to offer a cross‐cultural perspective on community‐based language pedagogy.

Culturally responsive practices in the classrooms, schools, and districts are introduced in Section 3 to showcase how innovative ideas and invited change have been used to respond to the demands of our present age. Chapter 16 offers creative practices for motivating and engaging African‐American males in a college preparatory school that fosters high expectations for its students through using the seven values instilled in the Kwanzaa tradition. A portrait is offered on Wichita Public Schools and their efforts for scaling and supporting a culturally proficient educational environment for students, families, and the surrounding community is presented in Chapter 17. Chapter 18 depicts how students are encouraged to expand their voices of literacy through the use of their language and culture in the curriculum. Practices for including a deaf student into a mainstream classroom with a community of learners is offered in Chapter 19 to provide insight on how to design classroom instruction to include students with special needs. Chapter 20 discusses how to integrate culture‐based arts education across subject areas in order to offset the challenges of educating American‐Indians. Disclosing practices from an advocacy project for encouraging student legislators to engage in the acts of the democratic process through their participation in participatory democracy and social advocacy is presented in Chapter 21. Chapter 22 describes how English language learners in one district are presented with the chance to teach their native languages to their fellow classmates, teachers, and community. In the final chapter in this section, Chapter 23 documents how photography is used in a program that aims to present methods for improving the writing skills and achievement for diverse students.

Section 4 hones in on the importance of preservice and inservice teacher education for the development of diversity in educational settings. Chapter 24 describes how teacher preparation is improved by providing candidates with the opportunity to engage in interdisciplinary collaborations with those earning Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) certification. A description of a university program in teacher education is offered in Chapter 25 to provide an example of how to foster a new and empowering culture in school settings. Chapter 26 delves in deeper to changing preservice education by describing how equity and justice in education are actively sought after by students and service learning community partners. A model is offered in Chapter 27 that highlights how teacher preparation courses were relocated to elementary schools to provide prospective teachers with the opportunity of interacting with bilingual students onsite. Chapter 28 presents an account of an innovative partnership with visiting teachers from Korea in an effort to disclose the challenges and rewards of reciprocal intercultural mentoring. Creative techniques for forming teacher capacity are chronicled in Chapter 29 and a discussion on how the development of co‐teaching partnerships is used to foster teacher capacity building as well as supportive mentoring relationships. Lastly, Chapter 30 outlines how the CLASSIC© Professional Development program is utilized for teachers of culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Breaking the Mold of Education for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students is an excellent addition to the Breaking the Mold series. Educators and practitioner will find the pages of this book filled with sound research and intriguing examples to assist them in their interactions and service to students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. The strategies offered in this book are multifaceted and cover a variety of topics that affect our student populations. Kudos to the editors and authors of this book for an innovative, comprehensive, practical, research‐orientated text that will serve as an imperative educational tool for years to come!