PostDoctoral Research Fellowship

Torres, David D, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

Intellectual Merit: It has been theorized that the possible cause for the persistent underachievement of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) schoolchildren relative to white and even other minority groups derives from the different and conflicting cultural milieus of the AI/AN home and the schools AI/AN children attend. As a result, there has been a turn in recent years toward cultural based education relative to this vulnerable population. Viewed in some circles as a remedy to the decades-long practice of forced assimilation and integration, the implications of cultural based education for AI/AN student achievement have nevertheless remained unclear due to a historical lack of good data that can be said to be representative of all AI/AN children. With the issuance of Executive Order No. 13336 in 2004, however--which called for identifying those cultural and linguistic practices shown to improve the academic performance of AI/AN children, and which led to the instituting of the National Indian Education Study (NIES) in 2005--an opportunity finally exists to fill the gap in the literature. Utilizing NIES data, the fellow's research exposes whether and in what context the indigenous culture orientation of AI/AN families plays a role, positive or negative, in their children's academic development. As a first step, the fellow highlights, by institutional control (i.e., whether the school is administered by the U. S. Department of Education [DOE] or by the Bureau of Indian Education[BIE]), the extent to which AI/AN culture figures in teachers' transmission of reading and mathematics knowledge during kindergarten through 12th grade. Given BIE schools' control by AI/AN community leaders, as well as their residence on, or close proximity to, tribal lands, the fellow hypothesizes a greater degree of cultural reinforcement in these schools relative to DOE schools, which are often run by non-AI/AN people and located away from tribal lands. As a second step, the fellow's research answers, at the student level, the following questions: (1) To what degree does the incorporation of tribal practices, beliefs, languages, or ways of viewing the world into classroom work enhance or detract from reading and mathematics achievement associated with indigenous cultural knowledge received at home?; and (2) Do the effects of AI/AN culture based practices at school vary by institutional control (i.e., are they the same across schools operated by DOE and those operated by BIE?)? Broader Impacts: The elucidation of the ways in which the differing cultures of the home and school might influence academic outcomes will provide professionals concerned about the academic trajectories of AI/AN communities with information to enhance classroom practices and bring about greater racial parity in outcomes. The multiple articles to be written and circulated at professional meetings and published in peer-reviewed journals will be among the first scholarship generalizable to the entire universe of AI/AN children throughout the United States. This scholarship will be of enormous benefit not only to intellectuals and professionals interested specifically in AI/AN educational outcomes, but also, and most especially, to those whose primary work is within predominantly AI/AN areas or elementary and secondary schools. Further, a finding of positive effects of cultural congruence between the home and school should allow for the identification of best practices for future policy implementation to close the AI/AN achievement gap. Improving approaches to educating indigenous peoples at the elementary and secondary levels will improve the chance of their greater participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (S.T.E.M.) and social, behavioral, and economic science (S.B.E.s) fields at the postsecondary and postgraduate levels. Another way in which the fellow's project impacts the broader community is its prospective involvement of AI/AN and other minority students in aspects of the research, to be effectuated through the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (L.S.A.M.P.) and the Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (A.G.E.P.) at the host institution.