Cultural Competence in School Systems Maddie Knapp
Purpose To show how teachers and students will both benefit from teaching cultural competence in the classroom.
What is Cultural Competence? Culture: thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of racial, ethnic, religious, or social groups Competence: having the capacity to function in a particular way Having the capacity to function effectively in other cultural contexts (King, Sims, Osher)
Diversity in Our School Systems About 1 in every 9 children are learning English as their second language (5.4 million children) (Pratt-Johnson) 65% of public school students (K-12) are from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds 83.7% of education program graduates are Caucasian (Cole, Lardy)
Culturally Competent Teachers 1. Value Diversity 2. Cultural Self-Assessment 3. Consciousness of Cultural Interactions 4. Institutionalization of Cultural Knowledge 5. Adapt to Diversity (King, Sims, Osher) Courses Experience prior to teaching
Teaching Students to be Culturally Competent Celebrate backgrounds all year Facilitate discussion Create relationships Books, posters, videos (Miller)
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