What is culture-based education?
Similar to culturally relevant pedagogy, culture-based education “invites students and teachers to challenge the status quo in terms of whose knowledge is valued” (Wurdeman et. al, 2015, p. 434). Culture-based education (CBE) is focused on the positive impact of the socio-emotional well-being of students from marginalized cultures. Cultural leveraging is prioritized, and its proponents argue that CBE positively impacts student performance on standardized test scores (Kana‘iaupuni et. al, 2010). There are a variety of culture-based learning environments, and in Hawai’i, culture-based education can be found even in the public school setting. There are also “culture-focused” and “immersion” charter schools (the latter conducts all instruction in the Hawaiian language). These CBE classrooms engage learners through culture and value indigenous knowledge as worthy of learning. Native Hawaiian sociologist, Shawn Malia Kana’iaupuni, maintains that “reframing Indigenous identities as cultural advantage creates counterhegemonic opportunities by giving voice to the expertise of elders and other cultural sources of community, familial, and individual strengths” (Kana‘iaupuni et. al, 2017, p. 314S). Culture-based teaching does not mean abandoning research-based practices. Rather CBE can be used in “an expansive repertoire of effective teaching practices to make learning intensely relevant to the children they are serving” (Kana‘iaupuni et. al, 2013, p. 155).
What is culture-based literacy instruction?
Imagine what it would be like to never see yourself in the literature you read from Kindergarten to 12th grade. Consider how this lack of representation has on marginalized learners who cannot find themselves in the literary canon nor in the Western traditional methods of literary analysis.
Culture-based instruction is an inherently strengths-based approach to reading and writing. Kathryn Au (2001) declared that “culturally responsive instruction fosters new literacies that make connections to students’ home cultures” (n.p.). Culturally relevant literature, critical literacy, and dialogical instruction are integral to engaging learners who have been marginalized by traditional models of literacy (Appleman 2015; Gay 2010; Glazier 2005; Harris 2007; Ho'Omanawanui 2004; Kana‘iaupuni et al., 2011; Lee 2017; Morrell 2015; Osorio 2018; Sims 1990; Wurdeman et. al, 2015). Teachers of literacy must provide multicultural texts and multiple perspectives to meet the needs of diverse learners (Mohamed 2016; Morrell 2015; Osorio 2018; Sims 1990). Tiffany S. Lee states that “cultural advantage prioritizes our stories and knowledge and recognizes the fluidity of our cultures for informing and transforming Indigenous education” (Lee 2017, p. 341S).
The “power of story” in many marginalized communities is often key to the passing down of ancestral knowledge (Ho'Omanawanui 2004; Kana‘iaupuni et al., 2011). Culturally sustainable classrooms include local and indigenous literacies (Morrell 2015) through which learners can see themselves (Osorio 2018; Sims 1990, Tatum 2014). Local and native literature provide social-emotional empowerment, but they also empower students to engage in producing their own counterstories (Ho'Omanawanui 2004; Hudley et. al, 2014; Kaiwi et. al 2006; McDougall 2018; Morrell 2015).
Beyond the inclusion of local and multicultural literature, sustainable literacy provides cultural and linguistic agency to adolescent learners by providing opportunities for “critical navigation of hegemonic discourses” (Morrell 2008, pp. 5-6). Explicit instruction in multiple perspectives (Appleman 2015, Glazier et. al, 2005) and critical literature pedagogy (Borsheim-Black et. al, 2014) encourage learners to read with and against the text. These methods are beneficial for all learners, and they are effective in helping marginalized groups explore issues of power, language ideology, decolonization, and positioning. In We Do Language: English language variation in the secondary English classroom, Anne H. Charity-Hudley and Christine Mallinson identify many of these central components of culturally sustainable literacy. “Language can both free us and bind us, and as students are taught to harness the power of language themselves, they can gain the confidence to bridge the gap between literary worlds and their own and seek to add their voices to the literary canon” (Hudley et. al, 2014, p.103).
A culture-based literacy program will always be context-specific, but the essential components are derived from critical pedagogy and multicultural education. In Hawaii the Western model of education often reflects curriculum violence across content areas for indigenous learners. A culture-based literacy program on the islands must carefully consider the historical trauma of colonization and the power of language ideology in curriculum objectives.
I ka ‘ōlelo no ke ola, i ka ‘ōlelo nō ka make
In the language is life. In the language is death (Hawaiian).
