School‐museum partnerships for culturally responsive teaching
| Date | 01 October 2003 |
| Pages | 435-442 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470310499803 |
| Published date | 01 October 2003 |
| Author | Mark Christal |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
School-museum
partnerships for
culturally responsive
teaching
Mark Christal
Introduction
One of the greatest challenges faced by
education today is how to equitably serve all
members of our pluralistic society. To provide
equitable education, many education scholars
argue for pedagogical approaches that
effectively address the differences that
non-mainstream children bring to the
classroom due to their home cultures and
languages (Banks, 1992; Gay, 2000;
Ladson-Billings, 1994; Smith, 1998; Villegas
and Lucas, 2002).
One of these approaches, which is still being
formulated, is cultural responsive teaching, a
term that has been applied to classroom
practices that acknowledge student cultural
knowledge as a positive basis on which to
build new knowledge. Accessing student
cultural knowledge in appropriate ways,
however, is often problematical for teachers.
Textbooks continue to be the primary
curricular resource for teachers, and textbook
publishers, who tend to represent the interests
of the European-US majority, have largely
failed in presenting minority issues accurately
and equitably (Gay, 2000).
The information and communication
technologies that schools have been rapidly
acquiring offer a great potential for new
information resources and teaching practices
that may help to remedy the lack of cultural
inclusion in the curriculum. The Internet
makes it possible for students and teachers to
access information in the classroom to
supplement textbook offerings. Students may
engage in technology-supported learning
projects in which they create their own
media-rich learning products. Such projects
may take advantage of learning resources
outside the classroom, such as community
members, experts, libraries, businesses,
government agencies, and museums. The
The author
Mark Christal is Instructional Technology Consultant,
Austin, Texas, USA.
Keywords
Virtual organizations, Cultural synergy,
Information systems, Museums, Learning,
Native Americans
Abstract
A dissertation study combined four case studies that
examined school-museum partnerships for virtual
museum projects in which students did virtual reality
imaging of museum objects related to their cultures.
Students also researched their selected objects with the
help of museum professionals, anthropologists, and
community members. Project plans also specified that
students would write essays to accompany the virtual
museum exhibits, but that was not always accomplished.
Each case is discussed, giving a brief sampling of some of
the themes that emerged from them. A composite picture
of the cases provided a more comprehensive description
of the innovation through nine theme categories derived
from the four cases. Three of the theme categories are
discussed. The four cases were also examined to see what
they revealed about culturally responsive teaching. Four
of the ten culturally responsive elements identified in the
study are discussed.
Electronic access
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is
available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
Note: Because of the need to protect the
confidentiality of the human subjects, all names in
the study are aliases. The schools and museums
that were involved in the study were such small
institutions that naming them would be
tantamount to naming the informants and thus
violate the research project confidentiality
agreement. In order to at least partially represent
the unique cultures of Native American tribes,
each participating Native community has been
identified with a larger category of Native culture,
such as the north-west tribes or the Wabanaki
confederacy.
435
The Electronic Library
Volume 21 .Number 5 .2003 .pp. 435-442
#MCB UP Limited .ISSN 0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/02640470310499803
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