Social and Cultural Issues

REFLECTION: 

One of the most difficult to understand aspects of the learning process, is how social and cultural contexts play into the dynamic of individual learning. The manner that international students may struggle to understand and assimilate themselves into a dominant culture, filled with mysterious customs that conflict with their own can be a particular challenge to them, and when not addressed these issues can often result in depression within the learner and disengagement from the academic process. 

Social and cultural dynamics can be extremely subtle and therefore challenging to understand and gain mastery over. When learners come from diverse social backgrounds and experience circumstances that are entirely singular to themselves, this issue can become even more complex and difficult to overcome. Formal and informal learning processes, direct and indirect modes of personal communication are often originally formed due to social conditioning and assimilated cultural norms. Learning to navigate these sometimes confusing customs and social norms can be of particular challenge to the international student, and will require greater understanding from the instructor, to intervene when a learner may be struggling to engage in group discussion, for example, and yet is hesitant to adopt a new social more they are unfamiliar with. 

I learned more than I could have anticipated from the Social Foundations of Education, class, with Dr. Ramin Faramandpur and I came away from that class with a far richer understanding of my own unconscious presumptions about race, class and gender issues that will always remain pertinent concerns for any educator. By doing the reading reflections and engaging in group discussions, as well as writing the Biography paper, and engaging in other classroom activities, I was able to closely examine my own preconceived notions about race, class and gender that will inform my abilities as an instructor. 

Learning about the particular concerns of various ethnic groups and what customs, social mores and norms may confuse or perturb them was a wonderful way of expanding my understanding of the deep diversity inherent in all classroom environments and also to impress upon me the serious obligation I have as in instructor to always consider those complex dynamics, when approaching my role as classroom facilitator to learning. 

ARTIFACT: 

Student: Ms. Theresa Kennedy 

Professor: Ramin Farahmandpur 

Reflection Paper # 4

ELP 551

Reading, “Moments of Social Inclusion and Exclusion...” by Lareau and Horvat

A.) The main concepts in this reading is the idea that social inclusion and social exclusion have a direct impact on whether or not parents feel valued in a school setting or not, as illustrated in the study done on the Quigley Elementary School. Also shown in the study was that when parents are involved and invested in their children's education, children are more successful academically, and experience more ease in the educational process, than children who are not supported by their parents to do well academically. The idea of social inclusion and social exclusion and the various dynamics that it represents, is an example of how social capital effects races, and the manner that those in power respond to those effected.

B.) How social capital determines social inclusion or exclusion and how this can relate to individuals in either a position of power or a weaker position, for example black parents, as opposed to white parents, who might have issues in the manner that their children are bing educated in a primary school, such as Quigley's Elementary school.

C.) “The most important point however, is that social class appears to mediate how parents with similar types of concern about racial discrimination seek to manage their children's school careers. The results point to the influence of social class on how families manage their concerns about racial injustice at school.” (SAS page 79).

D.) This article makes sense to me, as I have vivid recollections of the unfair and unjust manner that former teachers and school administrators (from my old grammar school, Chapman Elementary, in NW Portland) treated certain families, if they were low income. Even when those father's or mothers made an attempt to engage with the teachers or administrators, they were often 'kindly' rebuffed more often than not.

It was next to impossible not to notice how they were treated differently, as opposed to those other parents, generally white parents, who were higher income and better educated. I could see how class and even race determined the responses from the teachers and those in power positions in the school. Primarily, I noticed that if a parent 'looked' the part, and wore attractive and expensive looking clothes, they were treated differentially and their opinions were taken seriously and given the proper amount of respect, and those who looked 'poor' were ignored. My mother was one of those who were politely ignored.

F.) One aspect of this study that would have been interesting to direct more focus on is the manner that children who are not encouraged by their parents to do well academically tend to fail in their academic pursuits, and how that reality effects their future time in a university setting, for example. Too many parents, in my opinion, attempt to blame school administrators and educators for their children's failure to succeed academically and they do not accept or contemplate how their own role in their children's' lives has either determined an interest in academic pursuits or predetermined an inevitable failure in that regard.                                                                                                                              

Reading 37, “Gender and Education” by Mikelson

1.)    The main concepts in this reading involve the odd social dilemma of women's continued success academically and how they do so well, while many men lag behind in the academic pursuits they find themselves involved in. Men apparently, are either starts or failures in the academic scene, whereas women tend to be more consistent and achieving than men, while doing better in reading, writing and the humanities. Men tend to do better in mathematics and the sciences. Despite this long standing knowledge, that men and boys do better in math and science, girls and women continue to do better, on average, than their male counterparts. To the point that some people think there is a “boy crisis” in schools and colleges across the country.

2.) The general argument is that women persist more in academia, and men less so. Women are more likely to graduate and be successful in an academic setting, than is a man. Another interesting fact is that men are more likely to be academic 'stars' and/or academic failures, and women exist more on an even playing field, who tend to persevere more.

3.) “...women do well in school because they have been socialized to respond to external validation for their efforts, whereas males are more likely to have an internal orientation. “Good girls” comply with directives from authority figures like parents and teachers because they desire the praise of the significant others. Because their motivation to excel in school is not necessarily linked to external rewards such as occupational prestige or high incomes, the weaker returns they receive do not render their achievements anomalous

4.) This reading was excellent, in that it illustrates the manner that women tend to be forced into situations where they must exhibit more academic seriousness, than men, for example. It shows the ways in which women are more stable and more successful academically than men, and some of the reasons why this social dynamic might exist.

5.) What might have made this reading a bit more informative or interesting is if they had focused more on why men still are paid more, for doing the same jobs as women who are just as qualified and how this dynamic manifests itself, for men who perhaps have half the education that women have, who are being paid half the salary, for doing the same job. If more attention were also placed on why men are more likely to exist on the opposite sides of the spectrum, in the sense that they are either academic “failures” or academic “stars” would also have been very interesting to delve into.

Reading, introduction to page 58, by Aronowitz

I.       The main concepts of this book are to illustrate the importance of making an educational system that matters and is not simply representative of a decanent past that uses subtle forms of exclusionary behaviors, that promote, maintain and reinforce the values of promoting hierarchies of privilege and power. When teachers are taught to 'teach to the test' then students are deprived of real learning. These and other dynamics are focus on in this difficult but valid exploration of the current educational system in America.

II.    The main argument is that too many universities in the current educational system promote the failure of students, who do not conform with social and university expectations. This failure to promote diversity in the learning environment ensures social insulation and the promotion of unjust privilege among the elite.

III.   “Despite the well publicized claim that anyone can escape their condition of social and economic birth—a claim reproduced by schools and by the media with numbing regularity working class students, many of whom have some college credits but often do not graduate—end up in low and middle-level service jobs that often do not pay a decent working class wage.” (Aronywitz, pg 46).

IV. In the sense that I can relate, as I come from a working class family, I can see the manner that academics insulate themselves by using social customs and traditions that exclude other individuals from the university experience. And I can understand what it feels like to have people make unjust presumptions about your character or motives, simply  based on your socio-economic status.

V.    It would have been nice if the writer made more of an attempt to not use polysyllabic words that create a social distance, between the idea and the reader. Its not an enjoyable read, but it a very valid text also, that raises many socially important issues.