Cultural diversity and learning gaps: Overcoming the “imaginary student” in Latin America

• In Event: Learning Equity: Sampling Challenges of Who, What, Where and How?

Proposal

Educational systems in ex-colonial countries typically target an “imaginary” student that belongs to the cultural majority, whose mother tongue is the dominant language of the country, generally of urban origin and of middle-class families whose parents have some schooling and aspire to higher education levels for their children. My research in Latin America demonstrates that this perspective fits only a part of these countries’ populations, and very often a small segment of them. When analyzing learning outcomes, learning gaps are generally large and omnipresent. Scholars tend to attribute these gaps to external variables such as socioeconomic status, parents’ schooling, distance from school, and to internal school variables such as infrastructure, teacher characteristics, teaching methods and, sometimes, school management. The characteristics of the student, when he or she belongs to a minority culture, speaks a different language, is involved in child labor are often seen as barriers to learning, as indicators of deficits that place these students in an unfavorable position. When recommendations stem from these studies, reversing these traits is sometimes suggested.

However, cultural and linguistic identities should not be seen as barriers to learning, but as legitimate diverse ways of approaching learning from cultures that are sometimes very distant from that of the imaginary student who is central to most educational systems policies and curriculum. In order to take advantage of diversity and to make it work for educational achievement (instead of against it), it is necessary to know much more than what existing information tells us about these populations, mainly indigenous, with African ancestry, or internal or external migrants or refugees. In order to reach this segment of the bottom of the pyramid and to further equity in learning, research needs to better explain gaps in learning outcomes among cultural minorities and promote policies that are more granular and provide disaggregated information on these populations. They must also delve deeper into what their achievements and difficulties actually are, as well as to what they already know and can do well, what holds their interest, what develops their curiosity including how cultural identity plays into schooling and learning.

This presentation will look into some of these problems and will present some examples of information and findings from studies that have focused on population characteristics (the “who”) of those at the bottom of the learning pyramid, particularly in Mexico and Latin America more broadly.

Author

• SYLVIA IRENE SCHMELKES, U IBEROAMERICANA, A.C. - UIB540920IT3