Culturally Responsive Literacy Practices in an Early Childhood Community     

Susan V. Bennett  AnnMarie Alberton Gunn  Guda Gayle-Evans  Estanislado S. BarreraIV  Cynthia B. Leung 《Early Childhood Education Journal》2018,46(2):241-248

Early childhood educators continue to see an increase in their culturally diverse student population. As our country continues to grow as a multicultural nation, it is imperative that our early childhood classrooms embrace this rich diversity and provide experiences that affirm all students, families and communities. We (teacher educators) synthesized the current research into the following five frameworks that we believe embody the foundation of culturally responsive teaching (CRT) in an early childhood setting: (a) developing a culturally responsive classroom community, (b) family engagement, (c) critical literacy within a social justice framework, (d) multicultural literature, and (e) culturally responsive print rich environments. In this article we situate each framework within the larger context of research. Next we move beyond discussing CRT practices by offering ideas on how culturally responsive classrooms look and how to implement this pedagogy and in an early childhood setting with real classroom practices.  相似文献   

Toni Morrison and the culture of poverty     

AnnMarie Baines 《Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education》2020,14(2):110-116

ABSTRACT

Author Toni Morrison used fictional narratives to make readers uncomfortably aware of their collective role in perpetuating the culture of poverty and pitying its victims. In her first novel, The Bluest Eye, she focused on the most vulnerable member of society – a child – to depict the consequences of extreme social isolation and shine a spotlight on problematic explanations of poverty that fail to critique dominant narratives. This article examines how Morrison utilized relationships in The Bluest Eye to expose the societal conspiracies that damage children. Through her characters, Morrison challenges us to move away from the comfort of pitying victims to interrogating the role we play, especially in our schools. Using literary analysis, this article makes a case for helping young people resist the internalization of negative stereotypes, helping them use their voices to confront the deficit thinking and structural racism that pervades today’s educational system.  相似文献   

Exploring Names and Identity Through Multicultural Literature in K-8 Classrooms     

Barbara Peterson  AnnMarie Gunn  Alejandro Brice  Kathleen Alley 《Multicultural Perspectives》2015,17(1):39-45

Children's names reflect their gender, culture, religion, language, and family history. Use of students' personal names has the power to positively affirm identity and signal belonging within the classroom and school community. However, naming practices also have the power to exclude, stereotype, or disadvantage students. For many students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, their names can be a source of cultural conflict and a watershed for issues of identity and belonging within the school setting. Through multicultural explorations of students' names, educators can affirm students' cultures and identities, and draw upon these as resources to support learning and development from early childhood through the adolescent years. The purpose of this article is to (a) discuss the importance of a person's name to cultural identity, (b) describe strategies to build multicultural communities in K-8 classrooms through exploration of students' names, and (c) suggest multicultural children's literature and curricular activities to teach about the importance of personal names, and develop cross-cultural understandings.  相似文献   

Squishing Circuits: Circuitry Learning with Electronics and Playdough in Early Childhood     

Peppler  Kylie  Wohlwend  Karen  Thompson  Naomi  Tan  Verily  Thomas  AnnMarie 《Journal of Science Education and Technology》2019,28(2):118-132

While circuitry lessons have traditionally been first introduced in late elementary school, they remain challenging conceptually for undergraduates in physics and engineering courses. Seeking to provide a higher quality and earlier introduction to circuitry learning for young children (ages 3–5), this paper investigates the affordances of utilizing the Squishy Circuits toolkit, a circuitry kit that combines circuit components and playdough, as a first introduction. Our study engaged 45 children across three nursery school classrooms in open-ended play with Squishy Circuits toolkits for seven sessions over a period of 2 weeks. Here, we focus on six children in one focal classroom in order to illustrate the concepts that children are developing during play and open exploration with the kits and a range of crafting materials. Findings indicated that the Squishy Circuits toolkit enabled children to explore concepts important to circuitry learning, including current flow, polarity, and connections. Additionally, analysis of whole class conversations before and after the circuitry explorations indicated significant gains in children’s ability to discuss circuitry concepts over the course of the study. Through individual case studies, we illustrate how children enacted these concepts through their play and how the transparency afforded by the toolkit make the big ideas of circuitry visible. This work serves to illustrate how very young children can successfully begin to engage with science topics commonly introduced in later elementary school when those topics are framed through play and discovery with transparent and malleable materials.

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Teachers Moving Forward on a Cultural Self-Awareness Spectrum: Diverse Children,Museums, and Young Adult Literature     

AnnMarie Alberton Gunn 《Multicultural Perspectives》2016,18(4):214-220

This case study research investigated preservice and in-service teachers’ (N = 23) experiences and understandings as they participated in a multicultural children and young adults’ literature course that incorporates visits to a Holocaust museum. A graduate level course was redesigned within a framework of social justice pedagogy by focusing on critical analysis of multicultural literature, teacher inquiry, as well as a civic engagement project. Findings from this study illuminated how this course design encouraged teachers to move beyond a focus on tolerance and acceptance, and toward a social justice orientation through critical exploration of issues such as racism, oppression, and the ways bias and privilege operate within their own lives, schools, and society.  相似文献