Contribution Approach

One last preliminary question: What is a culture? What do we mean when we talk about a given people's culture? James Axtell has provided a definition of culture that, in many ways, illustrates the problems of grappling with this slippery concept:

Culture plays a paramount role in our lives. “It is what shapes who we are and how we view the world” (Thorp & Sanchez, 1998,

After reading the definition of culturally responsive, I have discovered that neither of my schools is culturally responsive. With the increase of diversity in both schools, administrators and teachers will need to increase their knowledge as well as resources in order to aid these students. Until teachers are formally trained, it is my hope that they will at least incorporate one of Banks’ “five dimensions of multicultural education.” (Banks, 1993) During social studies and science lessons, teachers can incorporate the content integration dimension. In this dimension teachers can tell students “various isolated facts about heroes from diverse groups.” (Banks, 1993) With the knowledge construction

Teachers must learn about their student’s cultures if they want to educate them to the best of their ability. Many of the students in culturally diverse classrooms will want to learn in different ways. Some will want to learn in pairs, groups, as a class, or just alone. If the teacher is educated in their culture then lessons can be adjusted to appeal to every student as much as possible instead of forcing some to forget about their culture and learn like others. Students from

We will be covering culture and ethnicity in our studies, and would like to explain it to the parents/guardians here so you will be well prepared for the flood of questions that might come home from school to a very perplexed mommy. Here is a simple definition: Culture is how a group of people live, such as language spoken in the home, values, work (who does what and where they do it), community connection, religion, norms in showing emotion, relationships within the family and extended family, ideas about education, foods, holidays and gender roles to name a few. Ethnicity meaning where you are from, this is the big melting pot, America, and different people groups came from different places; North America, South, America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and Antarctica are places the children in our program could be from, and this is another part of their culture; it is their ethnicity. Both topics will be covered, please feel free to ask any questions you may have about them. We can provide handouts and worksheets for parents and children to work on together to better understand any of the topics we cover. We will be talking about all aspects of cultures in this

Cultural Knowledge is obtaining a sound educational foundation concerning the various world views of different cultures (Berman, Frandsen, Snyder, p.280, 2016).

Culture plays a unique role in an individual’s development. Culture is the combination of values, beliefs, and practices of a particular group. Culture gives us some of the most important factors necessary in life such as our morals, values, and more importantly the way we view the world around us. Culturally, I view myself as a 20 year old Hispanic male, of middle socio-economic status, who has heterosexual preferences, with a strong background in the Catholic religion. Some of my first lessons as a child were all cultural, from getting dressed, how and what I ate, how I address my parents and family members, and so on. Although all of these features

Most Americans are not aware of the many definitions the word culture has had over its course of existence in the English language. Some associate their knowledge of culture with one of Beethoven 's classic symphonies or with a beautiful painting by Picasso. These same individuals most often classify their ideal of culture in two classes- high and low culture. As the authors state, “a cultured person is someone who has achieved a certain level of refinement and

In “Culture and Learning,” Sonia Nieto explains the tremendous culture and linguistic diversity is evident in our schools today. In the article, it expresses that the term “culture” can be problematic because it can mean different

Based on those thoughts, my own interest in culture and its effects on teacher’s teaching, on students' understanding has been a growing one. I feel that I have always been intuitively aware of the many different cultural groups and environments that existed around me. I have also understood the need to use the language and the understanding of the group in order to live within it or along side it.

Culture is defined as “The ideas, attitudes, customs, beliefs, values and social behaviour of a particular group of people or society that are passed on from generation to generation” (Brentnall, A., n.d.).

Culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people. It is learned and transmitted from one generation to the next. Culture will change as situations and the needs of people change. A school environment itself constitutes a subculture within a larger society. Each school has a culture of its own, like a minuscule society. The school culture reflects the community in which the school is located and its students’ characteristics. This will consist of the values, attitudes, beliefs, norms, and customs of those making the system. This is because of the racial and socioeconomic segregation of residential communities. A school’s culture is formed by its history context and the individuals in it. Each school has a

The concept of culture is something that defines many aspects of one’s life. From physical objects to different ways of thinking, culture adds significance to human life and makes groups of people distinct from one another. Culture is essentially a group of people who come together with similar interests and points of view. According to the Center for Advanced Language Acquisition of the University of Minnesota, “culture is defined as the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization.” From a more sociological perspective, culture is a way in which people come together in order to fulfill their needs. These shared patterns and ideas identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group.” Culture is one of the things that sets the United States apart from the rest of the world. Not that the rest of the world is not cultural, but the circumstance here is different. Many people of different cultural backroads come to this country in search of a better life. As a consequence, the United States has become a place where many cultures merge together like a colossal pot soup.

Culture can be defined in many ways due to the fact that everyone can have their own distinct and traditional beliefs and values. “ Culture is fluid, it is not a static entity which one takes out of the box on occasion. It is with us daily” (Cultural Handout). Someone’s culture is set as the characteristics of the group practices in language, religion, types of food, social traits and habits, and the distinct arts and music. There are a variety of different cultures for example, Western Culture, Eastern Culture, Latin Culture, Middle Eastern Culture, and African Culture. All of these different cultures have their own ideas, values, and individualism, laws that are implied, civil rights, and even technology. In our, “ Culture Handout” culture is defined as the tool of the mind, “ it is an individual’s way seeing and interacting within the world. It encompasses one’s values systems, beliefs, and perceptions of the world around them. Race, socio-economic class gender, sexual orientation, ability, geographic location, age, religion language, etc. all impact the formation of culture, but these various context are not culture” (Cultural Handout).

Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1962) identify over 150 scientific definitions of the concept of culture. Indeed, many authors have tried to define culture and this is why there are so many definitions and that a unique one is hard to find. First of all, Kroeber and Kluckholn (1952) assume that culture is a suite of patterns, implicit and explicit, “of and for behaviour acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments in artefacts” (p.47). Later, Hofstede adds that culture is “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another” (Hofstede, 1991, p.51). This definition is the most widely accepted one amongst practitioners. For Winthrop (1991), culture is the distinctive models of thoughts, actions and values that composed members of a society or a social group. In other words,