Equity Cultural Responsiveness In The Middle Grades

While developmental responsiveness is a deservingly key emphasis of middle grades education, this emphasis has often been to the detriment of focusing on the cultural needs of young adolescents. This Handbook volume explores research relating to equity and culturally responsive practices when working with young adolescents. Middle school philosophy largely centers on young adolescents as a collective group. This lack of focus has great implications for young adolescents of marginalized identities including but not limited to those with culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, LGBTQ youth, and those living in poverty. If middle level educators claim to advocate for young adolescents, we need to mainstream conversations about supporting all young adolescents of marginalized identities. It empowers researchers, educators, and even young adolescents to critically examine and understand the intersectionality of identities that historically influenced (and continue to affect) young adolescents and why educators might perceive marginalized youth in certain ways. It is for these reasons that researchers, teachers, and other key constituents involved in the education of young adolescents must devote themselves to the critical examination and understanding of the historical and current socio-cultural factors affecting all young adolescents. The chapters in this volume serve as a means to open an intentional and explicit space for providing a critical lens on early adolescence–a lens that understands that both developmental and cultural needs of young adolescents need to be emphasized to create a learning environment that supports every young adolescent learner.

A bold, brain-based teaching approach to culturally responsive instruction To close the achievement gap, diverse classrooms need a proven framework for optimizing student engagement. Culturally responsive instruction has shown promise, but many teachers have struggled with its implementation—until now. In this book, Zaretta Hammond draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to offer an innovative approach for designing and implementing brain-compatible culturally responsive instruction. The book includes: Information on how one’s culture programs the brain to process data and affects learning relationships Ten “key moves” to build students’ learner operating systems and prepare them to become independent learners Prompts for action and valuable self-reflection

The achievement of students of color continues to be disproportionately low at all levels of education. More than ever, Geneva Gay's foundational book on culturally responsive teaching is essential reading in addressing the needs of today's diverse student population. Combining insights from multicultural education theory and research with real-life classroom stories, Gay demonstrates that all students will perform better on multiple measures of achievement when teaching is filtered through their own cultural experiences. This bestselling text has been extensively revised to include expanded coverage of student ethnic groups: African and Latino Americans as well as Asian and Native Americans as well as new material on culturally diverse communication, addressing common myths about language diversity and the effects of "English Plus" instruction.

Learn how to be more responsive to the diversity among your middle schoolers. This important book, co-published with the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE), helps you understand racial, ethnic, linguistic, socioeconomic, gender, intellectual, and social aspects of diversity, and consider how they relate to the unique needs and development of young adolescents. Each chapter begins with a brief case study, followed by background information, questions to consider, practical strategies, and appendices with additional resources. With the helpful advice in this book, you’ll be better prepared to create a more equitable learning environment for all.

This insightful book presents and discusses the dialogues that took place in the New Directions in Middle Level Education Research session at the 2022 Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) conference. Carefully crafted and expert-led chapters draw upon four recent studies that were published in Research in Middle Level Education Online, the research journal of AMLE, and which were featured in a roundtable discussion at the 2022 AMLE conference. Each section of the book includes one of the four studies accompanied by two companion pieces offering different perspectives on the work. In the companion essays, the original authors enrich and extend their research by incorporating feedback from the conference session discussions, revisiting their findings and conclusions, considering alternative approaches to further research, and proposing new or clarified implications for practice. The book also comprises contributions from middle level education experts, who offer responses to each study, offering perspectives, critiques, and commentaries. Reflecting the generative, dialogic, knowledge-building process that took place at the AMLE conference, it showcases the collaborative work of middle level researchers who draw ideas and inspiration for their studies from prior research and accounts of practice, as well as their own experiences in the field. This book is an excellent resource for researchers, doctoral students, and academics in the fields of middle level education, educational research, and research methods in education.

How do I plan lessons for today’s diverse classrooms? This book helps pre-service teachers answer this question and learn to create and use such lessons in their classrooms. It is the first book to provide well-developed content-specific lesson plans that reflect cultural diversity in the United States. Rather than taking the traditional foundations-oriented, culture and history approach, this text translates that cultural and historical knowledge of specific minority groups into examples for instructional use. The text features entire field-tested units for elementary and middle grades in four content areas, language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies. For example, in the language arts unit, “Stories, Stories, Stories,” students tell, write, and read stories that build on their cultural background and experiences. The math unit explores informal geometry in the patterns of Navajo rugs, African textiles, and Mexican pottery. The science unit connects weather experiences to cultural folk myths and sayings. The social studies unit examines changing requirements for voting in the USA. The text can be used as a supplement for general or elementary methods, student field experience, or multicultural education, or as a main text in practice-oriented multicultural education and multicultural curriculum courses.

Written to address all grade levels, this K-12 classroom resource provides teachers with strategies to support their culturally and linguistically diverse students. This highly readable book by Dr. Sharroky Hollie explores the pedagogy of culturally responsive teaching, and includes tips, techniques, and activities that are easy to implement in today's classrooms. Both novice and seasoned educators will benefit from the helpful strategies described in this resource to improve on the following five key areas: classroom management, academic literacy, academic vocabulary, academic language, and learning environment. This updated 2nd edition is grounded in the latest research, and includes an updated reference section and resources for further reading.