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An African Centered Approach to Analyzing the Impact of Language and Culture in the Classroom

For many minority children, the classroom is a space in which language and culture often awkwardly and harmfully collides. Schools often maintain a culture that is misaligned with the culture of their students, which is seen as an incompatibility between home and school, and is often used by educators to justify this mismatch within the classroom. This incompatibility is clearly displayed by the misinterpreted interactions that often occur within the classroom between teachers and students, often surrounding the differing assumptions about appropriate ways of using language within the classroom (Villegas, 1988, p.4). The purpose of this paper is to explore the intersections of language and culture for African-American children within education. I begin by outlining what we currently know about language development and how it manifests itself in the classroom setting. Secondly I provide a short overview of the history of language in education and its relationship to cultural perceptions of standard versus non-standard English and identity formation. Lastly, I offer African-Centered and Culturally Relevant education as responses to the current challenges that surround language and culture within many traditional classrooms and as a means of reform. / Urban Education

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/1424
Date January 2010
CreatorsHentges, Melissa Ann
ContributorsWasik, Barbara A., Keith, Novella Zett
PublisherTemple University. Libraries
Source SetsTemple University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis/Dissertation, Text
Format73 pages
RightsIN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Relationhttp://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/1406, Theses and Dissertations

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