Learning Matters
News tips about education from Indiana University
African American female students use silence as a voice, according to Stephanie Carter, assistant professor in the Language Education Department. Through nonverbal communication, African American adolescent girls are able to convey to each other feelings of frustration that they feel unable to voice in the larger classroom context. "Because historically mainstream society has often negatively portrayed African American women in subservient and overly sexualized ways, some black women have created ways to communicate and educate each other," Carter explained. "I complicate the meaning of silence based on observations and interview data from studies on adolescent African American girls, and it appears that silence for them in many instances represents voice instead of a void." Carter's research focuses on adolescent African American girls' cultural identity in predominantly white English classrooms reading Eurocentric literature that is not culturally affirming. Carter discovered through research that some African American girls in the classroom context don't speak out when they feel that Eurocentric literature portrays the African American experience in a racist or unfair way. "They believe the teacher would view it as disrespectful and remove them from the classroom or punish them, which would negatively affect their graduation," Carter said. "Due to issues of privilege and power, some African American students, particularly African American girls, have had to give up a great deal and are only afforded the opportunity to survive in an educational system that doesn't understand them. Today, educators sometimes miss what's going on in these cultural spaces students have created in order to survive." Carter said that if literature in the curriculum continues to ignore or denigrate the contributions and lives of African Americans and people of color, these spaces will continue to grow, and African American girls will continue to use silence and nonverbal communication instead of speaking out in the larger classroom context. "Although it is good that these girls have created culturally affirming spaces in oppressive classroom environments, it is unacceptable that they should have to do so," Carter said. For more information about Carter's research, contact her at 812-856-8265 or stecarte@indiana.edu.
Researchers have noticed specific gender differences between artistically talented boys and girls. The vast majority of boys attending an Indiana University summer arts institute for artistically talented students realized they had special talents while only half of the female students made the same assumption. Additionally, said Enid Zimmerman, professor and coordinator of art education and gifted/talented education programs in the School of Education, while boys would focus on art first, girls often would work on their artwork only after completing their academic requirements. "Many girls are teacher-pleasers with a perfection complex, so they focus on academic work, while boys are less involved with achieving through conventional means," she explained. According to Zimmerman, girls' activities are more passive than boys, who demand active engagement with their environments. "Girls talk about their artwork as fulfilling emotional needs and then learning skills for self-expression, while boys focus on developing skills," she said. This trait is also expressed in their career plans. "Girls have a romantic notion of painting for a living, while boys focus on practical applications such a becoming a computer or commercial artist, art teacher, architectural engineer or medical illustrator." For more information, contact Zimmerman at 812-856-8172 or zimmerm@indiana.edu.
In order for teachers to most effectively incorporate multicultural education into their coursework, they must first deconstruct their own biases and experiences. "It's hard for teachers to engage in honest conversations with students without first understanding their own multicultural experiences and viewpoints," said Paulette Dilworth, assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Dilworth determined that while many teacher education programs advocate for and integrate multicultural content in their curricula, there is very little research available that shows whether multicultural content is being effectively implemented in K-12 classrooms or how students perceive what they are learning from the information being discussed. During a study to identify best practices in multicultural education, Dilworth surveyed more than 1,500 students in six Atlanta-area high schools and discovered two teachers who were integrating multicultural content while promoting an open classroom climate for their students. "While most teachers in the area responded, 'We don't do that here,' when asked if they incorporated multicultural education into their coursework, these two teachers were competent in the discourse and received a great deal of praise from their students," she said. Dilworth said the two male teachers, one African American and one white, were both predisposed to being multicultural in their teaching. "Because of their own backgrounds, they had been inspired to educate themselves about other cultures," she said. "They were comfortable talking about a variety of controversial subjects and allowing students to investigate topics that were important to them. They both felt that their job was to help young people discover the truth no matter how ugly it might be." For more information, contact Dilworth at 812- 856-8157 or pdilwort@indiana.edu.
Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through Inquiry, a partnership between the School of Education's Center for Research on Learning and Technology and rural middle schools in southern Indiana, serves to more effectively infuse inquiry into curriculum. According to project director Mary Pietsch Alexander, the partnership is designed to help enhance teaching quality to support inquiry in teacher practice. "We encourage and support teachers' work on expanding content knowledge through a process called inquiry. This teaching and learning model has proven merit in increasing the kinds of thinking and involvement of students in the middle schools," said the former elementary school teacher. "We provide monthly in-service training and funding for guest authors, IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences faculty and other experts in the field, equipment, new technology and literature. It is our biggest hope that our support will directly affect the students of our participating teachers." The project is in partnership with the Inquiry Learning Forum, an online learning environment that allows teachers across Indiana to watch other teachers in action, share lesson plans and reflect on what went on during classes. The two-year project is funded through a $400,000 Improving Teacher Quality Grant from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education. For more information, contact Alexander at 812-856-8217 or mpietsch@indiana.edu or co-grant writer and graduate assistant Carrie Bruner at cbruner@indiana.edu.
