Book Description

Abstract: The purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate how two successful teachers of secondary Spanish, who are committed to teaching about culture, actually taught culture. In this study, "culture" was described from a postmodern perspective that seeks to understand contemporary global events. Culture-general goals for overcoming ethnocentrism and being able to make cross-cultural comparisons were at the core of this view. The traditional notions of formal and everyday culture were subsumed under this description. Data were collected for each participant over six months. The data sources included observation notes, interview transcripts, researcher's journal, and document analysis. Data were analyzed by Banks' (2003) four levels of integration of multicultural content: the contributions, additive, transformation, and social action approaches. These approaches also aided with investigating the teachers' use of local, state, and national standards; their culture-teaching materials; their pedagogies of cultural and linguistic content; and their perceptions of the cultural content their students were learning. The findings include: the participants taught primarily through the transformative and additive approaches; although they were not familiar with national, state, or local guidelines, their teaching aligned with district goals; the participants primarily used literature and movies to teach about culture; the linguistic and cultural pedagogies of the participants differed, in that the first particpant planned her lessons around culture learning, while the second planned for grammar learning; both participants perceived their students to prefer learning culture-general rather than culture-specific material, and; neither particpant assessed cultural knowledge beyond objective facts. For pre-service training, the findings suggest: coursework to develop nuanced understandings of Hispanic cultures; study or live abroad requirements; and, incorporation of Banks' modified approaches as a framework for examining and implementing cultural content and pedagogy. For teacher in-service work, the findings advocate: use of the national standards as a guide for creating curricula and integrating multicultural content into lessons, as well as the development and synthesis of alternative resources for teaching culture.