Beyond Language


Book Description

This book aims to help educators improve their understanding of minority students within the American social context. It contains seven chapters, each written by different authors. The introductory chapter, "The Education of Language Minority Students: A Contextual Interaction Model" by C. Cortes, provides an overview of a theory for how the many sociocultural factors influence language minority education. The next chapter, "Ethnic Minority Issues in the United States: Challenges for the Educational System" by S. Sue and A. Padilla, looks at historical explanations for why some groups do better in school than others. "Understanding Sociocultural Factors: Knowledge, Identity, and School Adjustment" by J. Ogbu and M. Matute-Bianchi analyzes sociocultural factors such as group attitudes toward education, self-identity, historical experiences, cultural values, and job ceiling. The next chapter, "Sociocultural Contexts of Language Development" by S. Heath, stresses the inclusion of mother tongue and second language education in language minority educational reform. "Sociocultural Resources in Instruction: A Context-Specific Approach" by S. Diaz, L. Moll and H. Mehan provides a detailed illustration of how language development (reading and writing) can be improved, based on a positive link between the home and school. "Cooperative Learning and Sociocultural Factors in Schooling" by S. Kagan describes cooperative learning as an educational innovation for improving students' acquisition of both academic and humanistic skills. The concluding chapter, "Educators' Responses to Sociocultural Diversity" by M. McGroarty facilitates educators' understanding and use of the hypotheses and approaches proposed in the earlier chapters. The book contains approximately 200 references. (KS)




The Elusive Quest for Equality


Book Description

The history of the Chicano community's quest for educational equality is long and rich. Since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo formalized the conquest of half of Mexico's territory into what is now the U.S. Southwest, Chicanos have fought to claim what was promised them in the Treaty--the enjoyment of all the rights of U.S. citizens. In terms of education, they certainly have never had equal access, opportunity, or resources, despite legal victories. In this volume, some of the leading scholars analyze why the quest for equality in education has remained so elusive. They do so by documenting both the plight and the struggle of Chicano communities over the past 150 years, using the guiding themes of the role of language, segregation, Americanization, and resistance in the history of education for Chicanos/Chicanas.










A Kind of Passport


Book Description

Focusing on culturally diverse students and the adequacy of efforts to help them succeed in college, this book presents an ethnographic study of the basic writing course, a central element of the adjustment between academe and nontraditional students. The research site, pseudonymously called Dover Park University for purposes of this account of the study, was a typical, predominantly white, middle-class institution newly committed to the goal of increasing services to, and enrollment of, minorities, but with uneven and unremarkable resources and with a faculty and administrators who were well intentioned but sometimes weighed down by entrenched attitudes and precedents. The first part of the book discusses the background and design of the study. The second part discusses the nature of the larger social contexts in which the basic writing adjunct program was situated, and the nature of the more immediate social contexts (at the level of the English department) as perceived from the points of view of the writing program directors, adjunct component coordinators, and instructors. The third section examines four focal students' backgrounds, their attempts to adjust to college life, their struggles with writing, and perceptions of the small-group component of their basic writing course. The concluding section of the book reflects upon the complexities of designing effective programs to serve the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse basic writers, and discusses the more general ramifications of one campus's often troubled attempts to provide equitable opportunities for all. Interview questions are attached. (Contains 135 references.) (RS).