From Indigenous Elders’ Stories to a Critical Thinking Curriculum: A Discussion-Based Literacy Intervention Using Students' Cultural Narratives

• In Event: Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Topic - Solicited Content: Indigenous Children and Families

Abstract

The children of the Indigenous communities of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), a remote south-eastern corner of Bangladesh, have very low literacy achievement and a high risk of dropping out of school (UNDP, 2009). Their school achievement and completion rate fall disastrously short when compared to the majority Bangla-speaking children. Indigenous students, on average, read four years below grade level in Bangla, the language of instruction, and the only official language of the country. Yet, very few studies have investigated academic language skills in this population or evaluated instructional approaches to enhance them. This experimental study investigated the effect of classroom discussion (Murphy et al., 2009; Reznitskaya et al., 2001; Snow et al., 2009) intervention based on traditional Indigenous stories on Indigenous students and their native Bangla-speaking classmates. As part of the study, 96 Indigenous students shared stories they collected by interviewing village elders and their grandparents. Sixteen of these stories were developed as storybooks and the Cultural Resource-based Classroom Discussion (CRCD) curriculum was designed based on these storybooks. The intervention program was evaluated with 2,865 students of grade three to ten from 83 classrooms in 15 schools. Classrooms were randomly assigned to discussion and control conditions. Analysis with Multilevel models showed that students in classrooms from the treatment group, i.e., participated in classroom discussion (see figure 1) using Indigenous stories, scored 18.6% higher in taught academic words than students in the comparison group. Results also showed that, across all grades from three to ten, Indigenous students learned 5.95% more academic words than native Bangla speakers (see figure 2). Findings suggests that discussion has a positive effect (β = 1.90, p <.001) on student engagement and engagement partially mediates the relationship between discussion and academic word knowledge outcome. Data also revealed that discussion improves students productive use academic language in writing. These results provide evidence that discussion with cultural resource-based content (Au & Kawakami, 1994; Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1995a, 1995b; Lumsden, 1994; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & González, 1992) supports academic language development of Indigenous students. This study may also suggest the relevance of such a strength-based curriculum in reducing achievement gap to linguistic and cultural minority students in general and Indigenous students in similar situations as CHT in particular.

Author

• Maung Nyeu, New York University
  Presenting Author