Article Summary
Culture and Language have always been seen as two sides of the same coin. One individual cannot participate in society or interact with their environment without the cultural and linguistic filter since “all human activity is linguistically and culturally mediated”. This relation between culture, language and social individuals play a key role in Education. As the authors say, there is an increasing awareness of multiculturalism in today’s classroom, but schools have always been diverse. Even in a monolingual environment, schools gather learners from different social classes, political affiliation, or religious beliefs, so school cultural setting has never been homogenous. The question guiding this article is, “How to conceptualize …show more content…
They acknowledge that there is recommendation of “policies and practices intended to validate students’ cultural identity, encourage participation, and enhance academic achievement.” However, those practices are problematic since, first, they assume students’ cultural identity and, second, the efforts are limited to “superficial focus on heroes, holidays, customs, and food; a conception of culture as a static corpus of values and beliefs.” (Talmy, 2004). The authors conclude the article saying that there is a lot to learn from these flawed practices, but researches need to focus on how the construction of cultural identity works in educational settings by paying more attention in the interactions …show more content…
Some questions were elaborated to stimulate students’ discussions. After presenting the six perspectives on culture, students had to discuss the following: “A distinctive difference between theories of culture is whether they conceptualize their object as an abstract, autonomous cognitive system that underlies observable behaviors or as discursively mediated, context-sensitive and context-shaping social actions. Do you agree with a particular view? Why?” Most students were inclined towards the sociostructural view. As they shared their opinions with the class, they mentioned that one cannot escape culture, because that is how one was raised. They also compared the discussion between the static view on culture and the dynamic context-shaping view with the discussion of what came before: the egg or the chicken. Culture came before? Or was it shaped before being
Culture and Language have always been seen as two sides of the same coin. One individual cannot participate in society or interact with their environment without the cultural and linguistic filter since “all human activity is linguistically and culturally mediated”. This relation between culture, language and social individuals play a key role in Education. As the authors say, there is an increasing awareness of multiculturalism in today’s classroom, but schools have always been diverse. Even in a monolingual environment, schools gather learners from different social classes, political affiliation, or religious beliefs, so school cultural setting has never been homogenous. The question guiding this article is, “How to conceptualize …show more content…
They acknowledge that there is recommendation of “policies and practices intended to validate students’ cultural identity, encourage participation, and enhance academic achievement.” However, those practices are problematic since, first, they assume students’ cultural identity and, second, the efforts are limited to “superficial focus on heroes, holidays, customs, and food; a conception of culture as a static corpus of values and beliefs.” (Talmy, 2004). The authors conclude the article saying that there is a lot to learn from these flawed practices, but researches need to focus on how the construction of cultural identity works in educational settings by paying more attention in the interactions …show more content…
Some questions were elaborated to stimulate students’ discussions. After presenting the six perspectives on culture, students had to discuss the following: “A distinctive difference between theories of culture is whether they conceptualize their object as an abstract, autonomous cognitive system that underlies observable behaviors or as discursively mediated, context-sensitive and context-shaping social actions. Do you agree with a particular view? Why?” Most students were inclined towards the sociostructural view. As they shared their opinions with the class, they mentioned that one cannot escape culture, because that is how one was raised. They also compared the discussion between the static view on culture and the dynamic context-shaping view with the discussion of what came before: the egg or the chicken. Culture came before? Or was it shaped before being