The
Director’s Corner for the fall issue of African American Learners is devoted to
highlighting one of the presentations given at The ISAAC Public Policy Think
Tank that was held on April 28, 2012.
The Think Tank was devoted to providing research to educational
practitioners that has in the words of Asa Hilliard, meaningful instructional
implications. Our objective is to
provide teachers with research that they can immediately in their classrooms
and that administrators can immediately use in their schools to create change
for African American children.
Eleven of the keenest thinkers in
the fields of education, history and sociology were invited to serve as the
Think Tank speakers. An important goal
was to create a collaboration between scholars and scholar practitioners to
bridge the gap between research and practice with the goal of enhancing the
academic achievement of African American children. Each speaker was asked to respond to the
Epilogue that is posted in its entirety on the Public Policy/Think Tank page of
the ISAAC web site at www.isaac.wayne.edu.
In the Epilogue, I give my current
thinking which is that to analyze the academic challenges faced by African
American children, we need a broader concept that I am going to call a Cultural Prism.
The concepts of learning style and cognitive style have become obtuse
and muddied for our purposes. The
nomenclature and specifics of the behavioral processes that have been identified
by existing instruments make it very difficult for teachers and administrators
to absorb and translate them into practice.
When I originally wrote Black
Children, I was seeking to develop an argument that would be heuristic and
open up a fertile path of scholarship. I
now feel that this perspective is diminished when it is limited to classroom
pedagogy, especially because there are a panorama of components related to
schooling that contribute to a child’s educational success and
achievement. All are impacted upon by
culture. There is a need for a Cultural Prism in developing strategies to work
effectively with African American parents; design effective classroom
management strategies; promote nurturing child behavior management; eliminate
student push out from high school; intervene in child failure; understand
distinctive patterns of performance in particular subject matter areas, on
assessment measures and as mediated by gender.
Du Bois (1903) said that “The Negro
is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in
this American world . . .” It is my position that the scholar/educator
who is proficient in utilizing the Cultural Prism must be gifted with a
Du Boisian first-sight, second-sight, third-sight, fourth-sight and fifth-sight
which are all necessary to decode the difficulties African American children
are experiencing in school. The
professional who utilizes this Cultural Prism must be proficient in
each area and must be able to move seamlessly between each dimension. If a phenomenon is not explained entirely by
one dimension, the expert should be able to shift to the subsequent-sight for a
salient hypothesis. The reason we are
stuck where we are is that we have experts who can operate in only one
dimension or the other and maintain that the answer is found in the only
dimension they understand and have commerce with. This is the reason why we don’t have the
luxury of only having scholars collaborating with scholars of the same
discipline and practitioners working in isolation in school districts rejecting
any meaningful collaboration with scholars.
To construct this approach, we are going to have to create a dynamic
partnership across disciplines and between scholars and practitioners.
This broader concept of Cultural Prism requires:
1.
First-sight: an understanding of African and African
American history, oppression and culture as a context for behavior.
2.
Second-sight: an understanding of the socioeconomic
exigencies of African American life.
3.
Third-sight: an understanding of African American child
development, learning, cultural and behavioral styles.
4.
Fourth-sight: an analysis of statistics related to
achievement patterns of African American children.
5.
Fifth-sight: an ability to identify discrepancies in
educational practice that affect African American children which constitute
malpractice. These discrepancies apply
to instructional practices in addition to administrative decisions.
Specifically:
First-sight: an understanding of African and African
American history and culture as a context for behavior. While this dimension does not include race as
a biological factor, it includes an understanding of racism. Any scholar who seeks to interpret the
educational profile of African American children must be grounded in the
history and culture of African and African American people. There can be no valid oppression-blind
analysis applied to the situation of African American children. All of the ramifications of racism are
included in this category.
Second-sight: an understanding of the socioeconomic exigencies
of African American life.
This
dimension incorporates social class considerations in interpreting the
achievement patterns of African American children. This dimension is essential because of the
extent to which the largest numbers African American people have emerged from
and been relegated to the lower social class in America. This dimension also encompasses the need to
create the science to accurately assess social class as it relates to school
achievement for African American families
Third-sight: an understanding of
African American child development, learning, behavioral and cultural styles. This involves a grounding in empirical
research related to African American child development that is not included in
mainstream texts. Black Children was a stab at trying to pull together elements of
African American child development that pertain to learning. A comprehensive volume on all aspects of
African American child development is clearly called for. “How to teach Black children” manuals and
“How to parent Black Children” books do not fulfill this category. It is difficult to achieve a grounding in
African American child development from reading bits and pieces of empirical
studies distributed over an infinite number of publications. There should also be course offerings in the
academy that offer a comprehensive overview of African American child
development and pedagogy.
Fourth-sight: an analysis of statistics related to
achievement patterns of African American children. Every educational entity has data. These data are trotted out by everyone. However, there seems to be a limitation in
the ability of school districts and advocacy organizations to apply a Cultural Prism to the interpretation of these data.
When there is no culturally appropriate interpretation of the
achievement data and patterns, there is no subsequent creation of remedies and
interventions – only hand wringing.
Fifth-sight: an ability to identify discrepancies in
educational practice that affect African American children. These
discrepancies apply to instructional practices in addition to administrative
decisions. This dimension stems from identifying
educational malpractice that is perpetrated against African American
children. It is essential that educators
are made aware of micro and macro expressions of such malpractice. In Hale (2001) I gave examples of micro malpractice in the episodes I
reported in the treatment of my son in an elite private school. In my forthcoming book, Education in Black, I will present in detail a report I prepared as
a consultant for a Texas school district that gives examples of the macro expressions of such malpractice
in the treatment of African American children.
In some cases, the malpractice is not intended, it is defacto, but
malpractice, nonetheless.
For this column, I have transcribed
the presentation of Erika D. Taylor, Evaluation Specialist, Research and
Evaluation Department, Prince Georges’ County Public Schools, Upper Marlboro,
Maryland. Dr. Taylor is an ISAAC Senior
Fellow who will serve as Co-Editor with Dr. Marisha Humphries of the Conference
on Research Directions (CORD) Conference Proceedings in 2013. Every presentation at the Think Tank was
excellent. Four are available on the
Think Tank in their entirety. They are
also available on YouTube. Readers of
this column are encouraged to review them all as well as Dr. Taylor’s
presentation. The points she makes are
even more poignant in a live presentation.
Dr. Taylor’s participation in ISAAC
is a reflection of where we intend to go, moving forward. She is what I am calling a scholar
practitioner. She is employed by a
school district in a research and evaluation capacity. It is our intent to create a reciprocal
relationship between her and ISAAC. It
is our intent to stimulate her thinking through a discussion of the 4th
sight of the Cultural Prism and inform her work. Likewise, she is an informant who has helped
us give substance to this dimension as a professional who struggles with these
issues every day.
Academics are given credit and the flexibility
of schedule to produce publications.
That time is not built into a scholar practitioner’s schedule. The transcription of her presentation is a
step toward the facilitation of putting her insights into print. I want
to encourage readers of this column to use this post on the Afro-Cognition blog as a repository for your ideas and
comments. This will enable us to create a Progressive
Chat wherein readers can discuss an issue or register an insight for
discussion. You can be assured that you
will be given credit for your ideas and insights in print.
Also, if you have any ideas to
contribute to the Cultural Prism,
please comment on this Afro-Cognition
blog or send me an email containing your email address to: janiceehale@cs.com. We are going to send out questionnaires for a
survey to solicit ideas in the coming months.
We don’t want to miss you when we create our sample.
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