Teachers as Agents of Socialization Into a Diverse Society: A Call for Multicultural Competence

• In Event: Socializing Youth for Success: The Role of Schools, Teachers, and Parents in Students’ Educational Perceptions

Abstract

The second paper in this symposium, “Teachers as Agents of Socialization into a Diverse Society: A Call for Multicultural Competence to Close the Opportunity Gap,” recognizes the important role that teachers play in the socialization of their students. Changing demographics along with demographic matches and mis-matches are a key rationale for this paper. The U.S. teaching force is overwhelmingly (86%) White, female, and middle class (Ladson-Billings, 2004). This is not mirrored in the student population – and it is increasingly becoming more incongruent. There are currently more children of color under the age of 5 than White children (U.S. Census, 2010). This has obvious implications for the school-age population as these students enter the education system. These demographics necessitate multicultural competence. The practical implication of this paper is to build the capacity of all teachers to work effectively with all students and therefore improve academic and social-emotional outcomes.
Inequities in educational opportunities across a range of social identities are well-documented. Educational achievement in the United States shows systematic differences by race (Barton & Coley, 2009; Noguera, 2008; Miller, 1995), by socioeconomic status (Lee, Burkam, & Economic Policy Institute, 2002; Traub, 2000), and by gender (Dee, 2007; Dweck, 2007). Collectively, this problem has traditionally been referred to as the "achievement gap." Recently, scholars have reframed this concept to take the onus off of students and place more responsibility on the system; these studies refer to the "opportunity gap" (Milner, 2010; Fine & Ruglis, 2009). In thinking about opportunity, it is important to re-examine the metric for measuring this gap (Sawyer, 2011; Toldson, 2008). There is a tendency to succumb to implicit deficit-framing in comparing groups to one another, as opposed to comparing systemic opportunities for achievement and comparing what currently exists to standards of excellence and equity. Generally, these comparisons consider a macro-level perspective, but this paper is focused specifically on the classroom microcontext. It asks, “What is the role of teachers in perpetuating the opportunity gap?” and “How can teachers use their power as socialization agents to achieve greater equity and justice for all students?”
In classrooms, there are many aspects that are shared by all students– for example, the teacher, the curriculum, and the physical space. However, there are also non-shared aspects, such as the quality of the relationship between the teacher and an individual student, the teacher’s expectations for an individual student’s mastery of the content, proximity to the teacher in the physical space, and students’ inclusion of peers in classroom activities. As the primary socialization agent in the classroom, the teacher wields a great deal of power in distributing the shared and non-shared aspects. Borrowing the non-shared environment construct from the family processes literature (Turkheimer &Waldron, 2000), this paper is concerned with whether or not there is systematic variation in the non-shared classroom environment across social identities in the distribution of opportunities for learning and the role of the teacher in mitigating this.

Author

• Tinia R. Merriweather, Ethical Culture Fieldston School / Fordham University