csile - k-12 - culture quilts

Detailed Description:

The county population has been growing steadily for the past decade. Many of the new residents are immigrants, coming from many different countries and cultures. Many of the county's middle schools are experiencing increases in discipline problems, especially when students of different ethnic backgrounds, religions, or races must interact.

An educational task team studying the discipline problems recommended instead of studying culture and geography in the traditional instructor-led format, that 7th and 8th grade students should be encouraged to collaborate and generate their own questions and solutions during their study of other cultures. In lieu of taking tests and writing papers, students would build an electronic knowledge base incorporating everyone's work. Students would be able to use on-line references and multi-media to learn about cultures from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and North America. They would then use electronic knowledge-builder tools to verbally or visually represent their ideas and questions. Learners would also be encouraged to share personal observations and to interact and comment upon those of other students within the growing database. The instructor would monitor the knowledge-building process and only intervene if necessary. By making students partners in the learning process and co-owners of the product, competition between students was reduced. It was also helpful to have a non-threatening means to communicate cultural differences.

Learning Outcomes:

The learning environment is designed to enable learners to:

• Exhibit increased tolerance for peoples of different race, sex, or ethnic origin
• Compare and contrast cultural characteristics of different groups of people
• Compile information about the island's post World War II state and recommend realistic revitalization goals
• Appreciate the importance of cultural awareness in dealing with others
• Describe technological advances that have led to increasing interaction among regions
• Have better interpersonal cross-cultural communication skills
• Feel more comfortable and better equipped at collaborating with their peers
• Identify general types of issues that members of other cultures experience when they are a cultural minority
• Describe some of the challenges people face when moving to a new location with a different culture
• Understand some of the apprehensions natives of a particular culture feel when members of another culture move “into the neighborhood”