Tag Archives: community cultural wealth

“Community” for online learning

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Sadera, William A.; Robertson, James; Song, Liyan; Midon, N. M. (2009). The role of community in online learning success. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 5(2). Retrieved from http://jolt.merlot.org/vol5no2/sadera_0609.pdf

 

What are the effects of community in online education contexts, specifically on how students’ perceive their own success?  This is the question tackled by Sadera, Robertson, Song, and Midon in a 2009 issue of the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching.  The authors make a contribution to the online learning literature that has already established community as an important element of online learning, by studying how or what the effects are of community on perceived student success.

 

The paper’s readability is inhibited by both the lack of clarity in the research focus initially, and the significant typographical errors.[1]  Not until the “literature survey” do readers begin to understand that the focus is on students’ perceptions or feelings of their own success (vs. success as determined by observable factors, such as achievement [GPA or course scores], improvements in academic achievement, or retention), and then in the rephrasing of the study’s purpose in the Methods section introduction.  Otherwise, the study follows in a logical, coherent manner, typical of a report on social science research, i.e. the introduction is followed by an overview of relevant literature, methods, results, a discussion of findings, and a conclusion, inclusive of the study’s limitations and thoughts for future investigation.

 

Sadera et al’s work is framed by a sociocultural perspective, which guides their consideration of existing research on community and success in distance education.  They organize literature in three relevant areas of concentration.  The first explores how communities among people geographically disbursed are defined.  Commonalities among research studies in this vein indicate that communities involve a “shared purpose and the relationship among them including their sense of belonging, trust, and interaction” (p. 278).  The authors construct a definition of community that seems lacking, given the review of literature just prior presented.  It reads that a community is “a group of participants, relationships, interactions and their social presence within a given learning environment.”  They add that their definition excludes how communities organize and maintain themselves, i.e community is not defined as or by “the collection of technologies used to manage and communicate within the environment” (p. 278).  The weakness of this definition is striking, because what stands out in their presentation of existing literature on communities is attention to “sense of shared purpose” or “shared emotional connection,” “membership” or “common expectations and goals.”  Even a simple, generally applicable dictionary definition explicitly indicates the particular relevance of something shared or common, e.g.: “a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.”  Perhaps this isn’t influential to the research process, but how we define things are so important to our perspective, that it seemed worth mentioning the stated definition’s seeming deficiency.

 

The second category of literature the authors include confirms the positive relationship between community and perceived student learning.  They site two particular directions here: (1) a study on the importance or impact of community in different courses, which found no significant difference (though the scope of the study was limited – only two courses and in the same field were studied); and (2) sense of community and students’ perceived learning.  For this second orientation, the authors take up the Classroom Community Scale, an instrument designed specifically “to measure the sense of community in an online learning environment.”  (This tool is considered valid, as its reliability coefficient well exceeds the reliability coefficient Cronbach’s alpha accepted as the bar in social science research.)  Its application in other studies has shown a “positive relationship between students’ sense of community and their perceived learning success in online courses.”  The last area of existing research reviewed deals with community and interaction, “especially important in distance education…because it helps reduce feelings of isolation and contributes to the student success in online environments” (p. 279).  There are three types of interaction relevant to this context: interaction between the learner and the content, between the learner and the instructor, and between or among learners.

 

Data collection was organized around three areas of inquiry:

–        Is perceived learning affected by participation in the online community?

–        How does the sense of community affect perceived learning?

–        Does the amount and type of online interaction affect the feeling of membership in the learning community?

An online survey on a Likert scale was offered to undergraduate students attending an accredited US university, enrolled in online courses.  The authors had an 11.3% return rate on survey respondents, which left them with a sample of 121 participants, characteristically representative of “adult learners pursuing a technical undergraduate degree online” (p. 280).  Underlying survey questions were three objectives: (1) to collect demographic data, including previous experience in online courses; (2) to assess specific efforts to build community in the course, course design elements (including the instructor’s role), and the role of online technologies; and (3) student active participation in the course and community, including frequency of use of online technologies.

 

Data collection underwent a pilot several months before formal data collection, which contributes to the reliability of their approach.  SPSS was used to analyze data, as well as Pearson’s Correlation to address the three research questions in turn.  The researchers found a significant positive correlation between self-reported time spent on task and learning and their self-reported participation in learning activities and perceived learning.  In other words, the authors found a relationship between student’s active involvement in the online education community (however formed or described) and learning.  Next, they report positive correlation between students’ perceived learning and community (evaluated on connectedness scores).  Finally, their analysis of online technologies to interact found that only email had any significant impact on connectedness or learning.  In sum, the study finds that learner interaction and engagement, sense of community, and success in online learning are strongly correlated.

 

The authors make note of worthwhile research foci for the future, based upon the limitations of their study scope and their study’s findings.  Primarily, they indicate the importance of future research that asks the same general questions as this study: how community relates to success among online learners.  Research involving different populations (besides adult undergraduate students, comprising the sample of this study) would contribute to the literature.  Studying factors beyond what is specifically associated with the courses in the research scope, including activities a school or the broader environment might undertake to help cultivate a sense of community or elements of course design built with community-cultivation in mind, would support better understanding community and learning in an online environment.  Also, more research is needed on how online learners may experience community in different [types of] courses.  In the literature survey presented by the authors, a study by Rovai and Barnum is mentioned, which looked at students’ experiences in two online courses.  But, since the courses were in the same general field (education), and the overall scope was small, the findings are not generalizable.

 

Of particular interest for me, pursing the development of a junior/high school online education program, is the finding that email, not other online tools, such as chat and discussion boards, influenced students’ sense of community.  Given that students, in grades 7-12, in the pilot implementation of my program – a blended learning format, not fully online – find the use of email either incredibly arduous or highly undesirable, I am surprised.  This may point to the difference in online communication preferences between today and 2009, when the study was conducted.  Also,  it is likely that the adults in the study, irrespective of the era (acknowledging the rapid pace of technological change and use), use technologies and communicate differently than 12-19 year olds.  Exploring or hoping for future research on how K-12 students prefer to connect and how this influences their achievement is relevant to my work.

 

Also, I am especially interested in the study’s finding that learners with the experience of at least one online course did not experience community or connectedness in the same way as online learning novices.  The study found that these students seemed to find community at conferences more than in active participation in elements of their course(s) that might lend to a sense of community.  This reminds of the important finding of Liou, Antrop-González, & Cooper (2009) that students benefit academically from communities of practice that may be well outside of their academic environment.  Their community cultural wealth model highlights the importance of communities such as those created by students’ families or localities for student success.  Further investigation on how learners (particulary in grades 7-12) succed academically, in part through their role in and the characteristics of community within their online education context, will be important to my work, and that of online education in general.

 

Liou, D. D., Antrop-González, R., & Cooper, R. (2009). Unveiling the promise of community cultural wealth to sustaining Latina/o students’ college-going information networks. Educational Studies, 45(6), 534–555. doi:10.1080/00131940903311347

 

[1] For example, on page 278, the authors refer to the same research conducted by Rovia and Rovai.  Or, on page 279, a sentence that would make the point of the paragraph is left unfinished: “Not only does online interaction impact on students’ sense of community, but it is also found to be related to students’ learning success in.”

Changing the conversation, challenging the hegemony

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A number of scholars are changing the conversation on race and, in so doing, challenging the hegemony.  These scholars are eloquently  pointing out how biases among dominant groups in academia have led to limiting the conversation on race and, consequently, limiting understandings of racial inequality and injustices.  With powerful and thought-provoking rhetoric coupled with well-documented research, these scholars are shaking up the academic enterprise.

In the first chapter of White logic, White methods: Racism and methodology, Tukufu Zuberi and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2008) examine the dangerous effects that bias and misconceptions of race prevalent among white researchers can have on the research questions they ask, the methods they employ, the results they obtain, and even their interpretation of their results.  As Zuberi notes:

Data do not tell us a story.  We use data to craft a story that comports with our understanding of the world.  If we begin with a racially biased view of the world, then we will end with a racially biased view of what the data have to say. (p. 7)

Zuberi also observes that many researchers erroneously attempt to study the “effect of race” (p. 8) as if race was a causal factor for various outcomes; this is erroneous because, as Zuberi explains, race in and of itself does not cause anything.  Rather, the true causes of differential experiences and societal disparities are the various forms of racism and bias.

Critical race theorists also provide compelling arguments against the dangers of only considering society through the lens of hegemonic norms.  Tara J. Yosso (2005) describes how privileging only one dominant (white) form of cultural capital has led to a deficit framing of the experience of non-dominant groups.  Yasso then names six forms of cultural wealth common in communities of color: aspirational capital, familial capital, social capital, navigational capital, resistant capital, and linguistic capital.

As a Latino scholar who is committed to social justice and to utilizing research and education to advance social justice, I am excited about and grateful for the bold work being done to change the conversation and challenge the hegemony.  Too often, students of color and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are viewed as being disadvantaged because they don’t have the forms of cultural capital that those in power deem valuable and necessary.  Rather than view these students as “less than”, we should celebrate, value, and tap into their unique forms of cultural wealth.

I’m particularly encouraged to see scholars such as Yosso, Zuberi, and Bonilla-Silva advocating for dominant-identity researchers to critically reflect on their personal biases and to question how their perspectives influence their research.  Too often, only those with oppressed identities are made to justify their work or explain the impact of their identities on their practice.  As Bonilla-Silva demonstrated, researchers of color are interrogated about the identities of their data coders.  Similarly, female Supreme Court Justices such as Sandra Day O’Connor and Sonia Sotomayor had to field questions about how their gender affects their decision-making on the bench; such questions are never posed to males. LGBTQ scholars sometimes need to defend their very existence.  Imagine heterosexual people being expected to complete the Heterosexual Questionnaire on a regular basis.

With the excellent consciousness-raising work being done by scholars such as Yosso, Zuberi, and Bonilla-Silva, I am hopeful that, in time, we will see profound changes in research on and understandings of race and social justice.

Yosso, T.J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community and cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 1(8), 69-91.

Zuberi, T. & Bonilla-Silva, E. (2008). White logic, White methods: Racism and methodology. New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Looking for students in all the right places

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Imagine you are responsible for recruiting high quality students for your university. What if you knew of a group of prospective students who would add rich diversity and bring their unique experiences and skills to your university?  What if these students created an environment in which learning was enriched for your other students and them?

Here are some of the characteristics of the group.  They are hopeful and believe they can overcome substantial obstacles that many of your other students will never have to face.  They are multilingual with good cross-cultural awareness, literacy and math skills, teaching and tutoring skills, civic and familial responsibility, and are socially mature.  They draw from and give back to a strong network of social contacts (Yosso, 2005).  The individuals in this group have and rely on a strong family orientation and possess a deep sense of community history and culture.  They are adept at finding their way in unfamiliar situations and have developed capabilities by opposing societal inequities (Yosso, 2005).

Who are these students?  They are People of Color in groups who have been historically marginalized in our society.

Tara Yosso’s (2005) “Whose Culture Has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth” provides an opportunity for institutions of higher learning to positively transform the access, scholarship, and impact they provide by including groups that have historically been marginalized.  The article details the concept of critical race theory, which is called community cultural wealth.  Yosso (2005) describes critical race theory as a framework that can be used to theorize, examine, and change the ways race and racism affect social structures, practices, and discourses.  Community cultural wealth as defined in the article is an array of knowledge, skills, abilities, and contacts possessed and utilized by Communities of Color to survive and resist macro and micro-forms of oppression (Yosso, 2005).

Yosso (2005) believes that deficit thinking is one of the most prevalent forms of contemporary racism in United States’ schools.  Deficit thinking blames minority students and families for poor academic performance because: 1) students enter school without the normative cultural knowledge and skills and 2) parents neither value nor support their child’s education.  Basically, deficit thinking says it’s your fault you don’t fit in our model, we know our model is right, and we’re not interested in changing it.  In stark contrast, community cultural wealth calls attention to the unique aspects and contributions of marginalized groups.

Communities of Color nurture cultural wealth via at least six forms of capital including aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational,  and resistant (Yosso, 2005).  Aspirational capital is the ability to maintain hope for the future, despite real and perceived obstacles.  This capital is about the community dreaming beyond their present circumstances.  What if?

Linguistic capital includes the intellectual and social skills attained through experiences with more than one language or style.  When I studied for my masters I had the opportunity to take a foreign language. As a result of this experience I developed a deeper appreciation for the culture of the language I was studying.  An additional bonus was an improvement in understanding my native language.  Non-native English speakers possess a rich cultural heritage that complements the study and acquisition of English.  Children in these communities often have engaged in storytelling, which involves memorization, attention to detail, vocal tone, and rhyme(Yosso, 2005).

Familial capital is the cultural knowledge nurtured by family that consists of community history, memory, and cultural intuition.  Through the strong family bond, individuals learn the importance of maintaining a healthy connection to the community and its resources.  Social capital includes networks of people and community resources (Yosso, 2005).  An example of social capital is the importance of community support in Latina/o students going to college (Liou, Antrop-Gonzalez, & Cooper, 2009).

Navigational capital is being able to find the way through social institutions, particularly those that were not designed with Communities of Color in mind.  Lastly, resistant capital is the knowledge and skills that have developed by opposing inequity (Yosso, 2005).

There is a great need for universities to welcome individuals from Communities of Color.  By valuing community cultural wealth and changing the lens through which prospective students are viewed, we will improve access to our institutions and increase the excellence and impact we create.

References

Liou, D. D., Antrop-Gonzalez, R., & Cooper, R. (2009). Unveiling the Promise of Community Cultural Wealth to Sustaining Latina/o Students’ College-Going Information Networks. Educational Studies Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, 45(6), 534–555. doi:10.1080/00131940903311347

Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91. doi:10.1080/1361332052000341006

Challenging Traditional Theories of Cultural Capital

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As I reviewed numerous scholarly readings this week, the article Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth, stood out to me. This piece by Tara J. Yosso was very powerful as it focused on critical race theory (CRT). According to Yosso (2005), “This article conceptualizes community cultural wealth as a critical race theory (CRT) challenge to traditional interpretations of cultural capital” (p.69). The author came across strong in her challenges to previous research in her area of focus and with the presentation of her own theory with the power of Communities of Color.  It was a very telling article that discusses racism and its role in the Unites States educational system, and the how cultural capital is truly an asset for students of minority backgrounds in the U.S. that continues to be overlooked.

Being a Hispanic male who was raised in the United States, and an individual who has worked in the field of education, the analysis of CRT always seems to captivate my attention. As this article provided a variety of material to the reader, I found myself agreeing quite frequently with the authors points of contention and theory. One strong point that I can reflect on was Yosso’s statement that, the shifting of the research lens allows critical race scholars to ‘see’ various forms of capital within Communities of Color (Yosso, 2005). I agree that moving the lens in general can unmask a whole world of new ideas and results. In this case, Yosso presented her theory in five views that corroborate the experiences of people of color. I agree with her six themes and how they present challenges to previous research, by demonstrating Communities of Color as entities with various strengths by means of measuring atypical indicators and the role of racism in education. (Yosso, 2005) The article led me to look outside the box in terms of the approach that I my take moving forward in my own research agendas. Looking at research that is not afraid to push the envelope and propose new ideas is exciting to review, when it is supported and thorough.

I found Yosso’s article interested me not only because I agree with many of her positions of cultural wealth and the powerful role it can play for people in education, but also because her research opened my eyes to new ideas for my own research agenda. The approach to her research showed that it was ok to go against the grain and not be afraid to challenge the status quo. She was able to show the strides that were made in research before her time on the topic of cultural capital, but also highlighted the need for research and the position on cultural wealth to evolve. I loved the way the six tenets provide a helpful guiding lens that can inform research in Communities of Color. (Yosso, 2005)

Another reason the authors findings captured my attention was because I can see many of the members of my community of practice that I aspire to work with, as members of the Communities of Color mentioned. Because I anticipate working with similarly diverse communities being discussed in the article, the reading brought a personal connection to me. The article made me think more critically about the concept of CRT, community cultural wealth, and my own research moving forward. Reading this article allowed me to open my mind and see that although research may have been conducted in my area of inquiry, that there are always new theories and questions that can be asked.

I believe cultural capital is an essential component to the world of education and Tara Yosso presented one theory on how it can be measured that strayed from other researchers looking at CRT. Reading this piece was excellence for me, as it reminded me to be cognizant of looking at research from many angles, and recognize taking a different path then the norm is ok.

Reference

Yosso, T. J. (2005, March). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69-91.

Leadership and Innovation

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Arizona’s education system is failing our students, with “85% of high-growth, high-wage jobs in Arizona [requiring] some form of higher education and work experience” (Expect More Arizona, 2014) yet “53% of Arizona’s graduates do not qualify to enroll in our state’s public universities (Expect More Arizona, 2014). It is clear that drastic changes need to be made to Arizona’s education system but where do we start? The key to excellent schools is exceptional leadership at every level: administration, teachers, and students. Yesterday, I asked a colleague, who is a leader at a local Title I school district, about the successes and struggles at the schools in his district. As we discussed the nineteen schools, the conversation continuously circled back to a dialogue on strong leadership at all levels. If the success of students depends on leadership, what qualities do academic leaders have to possess?

Due to my passion for Title I Arizona schools, I am going to focus my discussion on the leadership of schools that contain a large population of low-income and minority students. First and foremost we need our educators to re-evaluate how they perceive our students, according to Tara Yosso in her 2008 article, “educators most often assume that schools work and that students, parents, and communities need to change to conform to this already effective and equitable system” (p. 75). Unfortunately, this is not the case and many of our schools are underperforming and lack the leadership required to offer an excellent education to all students. We need to have an approach to education that is culturally relevant and views our students as culturally wealthy learners. In order for a change to be made all educational leaders must possess the following qualities: ability to understand different cultures and the capital they bring to the table, competence to help others achieve success by recognizing individual strengths, capacity to give all people a voice, faculty to help create constructive moments of uncertainty, and ability to create an environment that is positive and culturally relevant to allow all to achieve access, excellence, and success. If these leadership skills begin at the district level, I believe there will be a trickle down effect into school and classroom leadership. Each of the qualities is relevant in the support and growth of a diverse staff and student body.

Outstanding leaders are able to put aside a deficit approach to thinking and begin looking at the cultural capital, which is the “accumulation of cultural knowledge, skills and abilities possessed and inherited by privileged groups in society (Yosso, 2008, p. 76), that all of our students and staff possess. According to Yosso (2008), we need to begin empowering people of color to recognize their cultural capital and use it as a resource to assist in higher achievement. Administrators, teachers, and students of color come with a significant amount of “cultural wealth through at least 6 forms of capital such as aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial, and resistant capital” (Yosso, 2008, p. 77). It is in the best interest of all leaders, whether it is an administrator, teacher, or student, to recognize the extraordinary advantage that cultural wealth can offer to the school and assist individuals in the process of recognizing theses traits. A great leader strengthens the community they are working with by empowering all parties to utilize all traits that they possess. It is time for our leaders to “restructure US social institutions around those knowledges, skills, abilities, and networks” (Yosso, 2008, p. 82) that all individuals possess.

Strong leaders not only empower individuals they work with to explore and utilize their cultural capital, they also make a conscious effort to give a voice to all members of the community. Encouraging individuals to have a voice, leads to innovation, thought provoking conversations, and progress in the school system. If all parts of the community of practice feel as if they are heard, they will continue to discuss important topics and help push towards positive change.

Along with valuing cultural capital and giving all individuals a voice, leaders must also be able to manage uncertainty, especially if they wish to see growth, progress , and innovation within the educational system. Uncertainly is defined as “an individual’s subjective experience of doubting, being unsure, or wondering about how the future will unfold, what the present means, or how to interpret the past” (Jordan & McDaniel, n.d., p. 3). Managing uncertainty is important to problem solving and community building, which makes for a stronger community of practice. Leaders must “generate productive uncertainty when they [encourage others to] problematize disciplinary content and actions” (Jordan et al., n.d., p. 5) in order to assist in the learning and growth process within a community of practice. If there is a high level of confidence in regards to problem solving, a greater number of individuals in the community will attempt to address issues and take positive action steps towards solutions.

If our education system saw an improvement in leadership at the district, school, and classroom levels, we would see a higher level of academic excellence, access, and impact. If we are to improve our education system we must start with the leaders and ensure that they possess the skills required to help all community members reach their maximum potential and continuously strive towards excellence. When leaders are equipped with the skills necessary to empower participants of their community of practice, we will begin to see higher levels of student engagement, encouragement of all individuals to use their cultural knowledge, and more culturally relevant material in the classrooms.

 

References

How it Affects us. Expect More Arizona. Retrieved 06, 2014, from  http://www.expectmorearizona.org/learn-more/how-it-affects-us/

Jordan, M. E. & McDaniel, R. (in press). Managing uncertainty during collaborative problem solving in elementary school teams: The role of peer influence in robotics engineering activity. Journal of the Learning Sciences. doi: 10.1080/10508406.2014.896254

Tuhiwai Smith, L. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples. New York: University of Otago Press

Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community and cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 1(8), 69­91.

Capital Campaign: Valuing the Linguistic Wealth of My Students

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This week, I did some more reading about an idea that has my full attention: community cultural wealth, or “the array of cultural knowledge, skills, abilities, and contacts possessed by socially marginalized groups that often go unrecognized and unacknowledged” (Yosso, 2005, p. 69). (This is the same set of assets I discussed in an earlier post, “Motivational Marginalization: Diversity in Private Schools.”) I spent some more time considering the six types of cultural capital proposed by Tara Yosso “that are historically undervalued and unacknowledged in White, middle-class institutions like schools” (Liou, Antrop-Gonzalez, & Cooper, 2009, p. 538). Here are Yosso’s categories, with her brief explanations of each:

  • aspirational capital: “the ability to maintain hopes and dreams for the future, even in the face of real and perceived barriers” (2005, p. 77);
  • navigational capital: “skills of maneuvering through social institutions” (2005, p. 80);
  • social capital: “networks of people and community resources” (2005, p.79);
  • familial capital: “cultural knowledges nurtured among familia that carry a sense of community history, memory, and cultural intuition” (2005, p. 79);
  • resistant capital: “knowledges and skills fostered through oppositional behavior that challenges inequality” (2005, p. 80); and
  • linguistic capital: “the intellectual and social skills attained through communication experiences in more than one language and/or style” (2005, p.78).

It’s the last of these, linguistic capital, that I’d really like to focus on today, for a couple of reasons: First of all, I think it would be beneficial to my own practice as a teacher to take some real, dedicated time to consider the ways in which I am–and, more importantly, perhaps, the ways I’m not–valuing and fostering each of these kinds of capital in my students of color. Secondly, I’m an English teacher, a writer, and a lover of language. I already believe, deeply, that the best vocabulary is one rich in the inflections, hues, loanwords, code-switching, hybrids, and mash-ups pulled from all of one’s languages and experiences.

One of the reasons I love teaching 10th-graders is that, on the whole, I think they strike an ideal balance between a child’s wonder and a young adult’s eagerness to engage in complex, intellectually sophisticated ideas. Because of that, I’m able to throw things at them that I didn’t really encounter until college: the idea of cultural marginalization, the literary and social concept of the Other, and the theory of multiple intelligences are all thematic touchstones to which we return, over and over, throughout the year as we study literature. Early on in the year, I try to establish that intelligence is not synonymous with years of formal education, and that education is not synonymous with schooling (this will serve us well when we get to our discussion of Colonialism with Things Fall Apart and I ask them if, for example, the people of Umuofia are “educated” before the white missionaries show up).

My students are already discovering and critiquing the ways in which language is all bound up in power. For example, all year long we talk about what makes something a “real word” (and I struggle to disabuse them of that question, encouraging them instead to ask if a word is “standard usage”–which allows us to parse whose standard is the standard and whether it will, or should, remain the standard). In tandem with the Richard Rodriguez essay “Aria,” which I discussed in that earlier post, we also read a first-person essay titled “Blue Collar Brilliance,” in which Mike Rose’s reflections on his mother’s experience as a waitress serve as a jumping-off point for him to consider and discuss “how much [blue-collar, service-industry, low-wage occupations] demand of both body and brain” (Rose, 2009).

As I’ve mentioned before, most of my students come from pretty financially comfortable homes. Several, however, do not. And so I offer this article to the class with the hope that it will, for the kids from wealthy homes, broaden their definition of what it means to be competent, skilled, and valuable as a worker and therefore broaden their respect for the people who perform these jobs. For the students who come from homes where their parents hold jobs like the ones Rose describes, or for students who themselves have experience working as waitstaff, house cleaners, landscapers or other jobs that their wealthy peers benefit from but sometimes fail to even see, I hope that this essay–and our careful, respectful consideration of it–communicates to them that I respect that work and that I want to create a space in my classroom where that work is valued, honored, respected, seen. I talk about this article in terms of multiple intelligences, but I realize now that I’m really talking about different kinds of cultural capital.

In fact, now that I reread Rose’s essay through the lens of cultural wealth, I realize that he’s celebrating the kinds of capital in which his mother and other blue-collar workers are wealthy–among them linguistic capital (“Lingo conferred authority and signaled know-how”) (Rose, 2009), navigational capital (“Joe learned more and more about the auto industry, the technological and social dynamics of the shop floor [and] the machinery and production processes”) (Rose, 2009), social capital (“She became adept at reading social cues and managing feelings, both the customers’ and her own … The restaurant became the place where she studied human behavior, puzzling over the problems of her regular customers and refining her ability to deal with people in a difficult world”) (Rose, 2009). If I were in a position to nominate another kind of capital to add to Yosso’s six, I might add something like sequencing or task flow capital: Certainly there’s a particular valuable knowledge and skill at work when a one does what Rose’s mother did when “she’d sequence and group tasks: What could she do first, then second, then third as she circled through her station? What tasks could be clustered?” (Rose, 2009).

Yosso asks: “Are there forms of cultural capital that marginalized groups bring to the tale that traditional cultural capital theory does not recognize or value?” (2009, p. 77). Her answer is an unequivocal “yes.” To try to address that systematic undervaluing, she works from a framework of Critical Race Theory (CRT) , which “shifts the center of focus from notions of White, middle class culture to the cultures of Communities of Color” (Yosso, 2009, p. 77). According to Yosso, “community cultural wealth is an array of knowledge, skills, abilities, and contacts possessed and utilized by Communities of Color to survive and resist macro and micro-forms of oppression” (2009, p. 77).

For that reason, I think it’s risky–if not downright inappropriate–to simply borrow the idea of cultural wealth from its home within CRT and simply apply it to poor or working-class people of all colors. (Although I know this is not a universally accepted opinion, I believe that a poor or working class white person retains white privilege. I’m not saying a poor white person has an easy life, only that his or her road is smoothed in ways that a similarly impoverished non-white person’s is not. Let’s park that idea to the side for the time being!) I want to be explicit in saying that I don’t think I can appropriate the concept of community cultural wealth and divorce it from its roots in CRT without doing so carefully and with limitation.

That said, poor and working-class people, like people of color, suffer a reductive and dismissive fate in the hands of our popular culture and our educational institutions. As Rose (2009) says,  “Although writers and scholars have often looked at the working class, they have generally focused on the values such workers exhibit rather than on the thought their work requires — a subtle but pervasive omission. Our cultural iconography promotes the muscled arm, sleeve rolled tight against biceps, but no brightness behind the eye, no image that links hand and brain.” Students who come from poor or working-class families, I would argue, might also be victims of deficit thinking, which “takes the position that minority students and families are at fault for poor academic performance because: (a) students enter school without the normative cultural knowledge and skills; and (b) parents neither value nor support their child’s education” (Yosso, 2009, p. 75). The suspected deficits are all the more magnified if a student is a poor or working class student of color.

Just as the educational system fails to value the forms of cultural capital that students of color bring, the educational system largely “defin[es] intelligence solely on grades in school and numbers on IQ tests. And we employ social biases pertaining to a person’s place on the occupational ladder. The distinctions among blue, pink, and white collars carry with them attributions of character, motivation, and intelligence. Although we rightly acknowledge and amply compensate the play of mind in white-collar and professional work, we diminish or erase it in considerations about other endeavors — physical and service work particularly” (Rose, 2009).

All of this is to say that in analyzing these two essays–“Aria” and “Blue-Collar Brilliance”–with my sophomores, we are already in a space where we are discussing cultural capital, though we have never used that term before. When I head back to school in August, I will bring this term, and this concept, to my students as a framework for discussing these two articles. So that answers how I can talk about cultural capital with my students, but it doesn’t really resolve how I can better value and honor the cultural capital–and today I’m focusing on linguistic capital–that they bring with them to school.

I want my classroom to be a place where these students get practice as both analyzers of literature and creators of literature. This dual goal was really crystallized for me when a friend, a middle-school teacher at an independent school, commented that “[He and his middle school co-faculty] had taken for granted that students should study literature in order to write about it. Yet [his elementary level faculty counterparts] emphasized that their students study literature in order to actually write it” (M. Fishback, personal communication, April 9, 2014). Similarly, I don’t want to just talk about educational equity with my students, I want to work toward educational equity with them. I don’t want to pay lip service to linguistic capital, I want to create a space where they can cash in on their linguistic capital.

One activity that I created last semester comes to mind as an example of a way that I could do just that. Although I conceived of this activity and implemented it before I’d learned about cultural capital, I’ll share it here as an activity that operates on the premise of valuing the language my students come to me knowing, as opposed to the language I teach them.

Last spring, we were reading Things Fall Apart, a novel by the great Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. Our discussions tended to revolve around plot (what happened?), reader response (how do I feel about what happened?), and historical context (Colonization and the importance of the book as a reclamation of a narrative of Africa). What was lacking–perhaps because the language in the book is deceptively simple–was discussion of the book qua book and what my students as budding writers could learn from it.

I selected a passage from the novel that had a lot of italicized Ibo words and ask my students to walk me through Achebe’s way of using the word to cumulatively depict its meaning as opposed to defining it with an appositive. Sentence by sentence, we read the clues provided by the text: Ah, yes, the egwugwu are feared; we can tell because the women of the village run from them when they emerge. Oh, but the egwugwu are also objects of fascination and admiration; we can tell because the women run only far enough away to remain safe but near enough that they can still see. Oh, look, here we see there are nine egwugwu. In this manner, we packed on understanding of the term that the author did not ever explicitly define for us, and we came to a full understanding of the function, appearance, and reception of these nine awe-inspiring ancestral spirits depicted by male village elders in costume at important community gatherings. We also realized that as readers we were quite tolerant and patient about having an unknown term take shape for us. In fact, we found it rewarding as readers not to be simply told what the word meant. So if we were patient as readers, we could probably, as writers, count on that patience from our readers.

Next, I asked students to choose a word they knew but that they guessed their peers would not know. It could be a word from a non-English language they knew, a technical term or piece of jargon from an activity or industry they knew well, or a nonsense word. I gave them 20 minutes to write a passage in which the word gets used at least five times but was never explicitly defined. Just like Achebe did, I wanted them to depict meaning as opposed to dictating meaning. I framed it like a challenge to them: By the end we should know what the word means and as much as possible about it.

Most students did not choose nonsense words. Students chose words from Mexican slang, Hindi words, and family inside-joke words. As it turned out, my students knew all kinds of words their peers didn’t know, and they were eager to share their writing (more eager than usual, I’d say). In terms of the writing itself, the results were clever, imagery-rich, and syntactically freewheeling and unbounded. After sharing, we talked about how else a writer could use this technique–with technical language, fantasy writing, or in boundary-blurring fiction and nonfiction like Amy Tan’s, where she tries to capture the experience of being the American daughter of a Chinese mother. They also independently connected the technique to what they saw in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake.

Furthermore, and importantly, the exercise served to heighten the attention they paid to the literary elements of Achebe’s book, which I think is crucial given the fact that “some works are called literature whereas other works are termed folklore. … the literature of people of color is more likely to fall into the folklore category” (Dunbar, 2008, p.85). Keith Booker argues that “anthropological readings … have sometimes prevented African novels from receiving serious critical attention as literature rather than simply as documentation of cultural practices” (as cited in Snyder, 2008, p. 156). Snyder (2008) adds that “the naive ethnographic or anthropological reading treats a novel like [Things Fall Apart] as though it transparently represents the world of another culture, ignoring the aesthetic dimensions of the representation” (p. 156). Although I do think the book opens students’ eyes to practices, rites, and traditions of a culture most of them know nothing about, I do not want to contribute to that very Eurocentric and Colonialist approach to studying Achebe’s work as a cute little artifact as opposed to a powerfully important anti-Colonial event and an aesthetically and structurally intricate piece of literature.

In addition to those benefits, I see now, this activity also invited students to leverage their linguistic capital. In this activity, bilingual students had the edge. By asking them to choose a word they knew that their peers did not, I communicated to them that I was explicitly looking for words outside of our shared classroom experience. Furthermore, in the sharing portion of the activity, students asked one another about the words they’d share–what did it mean, exactly, how was it used, what were the shades of connotation, was it “standard usage” or slang? To stand in front of the room and be the teacher, even for a few minutes, transferred the power to these students and their outside-of-school language. (Notably, the students who used a family-created “inside joke” word were also leveraging their familial capital to fulfill their teacher’s expectations of a piece of school writing.)

This is only one small opportunity that I have found in my current pedagogical practice and curriculum to increasingly emphasize, foster, and value linguistic capital. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I believe that each facet of Yosso’s discussion of cultural wealth is worthy of reflection and examination in terms of my classroom. How am I welcoming, rewarding, and fostering the development of navigational capital? Resistance capital? There’s lots to think about here.

Finally, to talk about these “knowledge, skills, abilities, and contacts” (Yosso, 2005, p. 69) in terms of capital or wealth invites me to consider how that metaphor can be extended: can a person become bankrupt of cultural capital? I doubt it. Can a person invest her cultural capital and enjoy compounding interest? Probably. Does a person pay any kind of cultural tax when he acquires cultural wealth? Perhaps. Can cultural wealth can be shared, spread around, redistributed? Yes. All of my students left linguistically richer after that activity, as did I.

References:

Dunbar, C. (2008). Critical race theory and indigenous methodologies. In Denzin, N., Lincoln, Y., & Smith, L.T. (Eds.) Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies. 85-99.

Liou, D., Antrop-Gonzalez, R., & Cooper, R. (2009). Unveiling the promise of community cultural wealth to sustaining latino/a students’ college-going information networks. Educational Studies, 45, 534-555

Rose, M. (2009). Blue collar brilliance. The American Scholar. Retrieved from http://theamericanscholar.org/blue-collar-brilliance/#.U5YvU3BgNbU

Snyder, C. (2008). The possibilities and pitfalls of ethnographic readings: Narrative complexity in Things Fall Apart. College Literature, 35(2),154-174

Yosso, T. (2005). Whose culture has capital?: A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race, Ethnicity and Education, (8)1, 69-91.