Supporting the Culture of Young Children and Their Families in Early Childhood Environments.

Everything we think, say, and do is candy through our own cultural backgrounds. But because civilisation is absorbed and passed down from generation to generation rather than explicitly taught, we're seldom aware of it.

Culture shapes not but our values and beliefs, but also our gender roles, family structures, languages, dress, food, etiquette, approaches to disabilities, kid-rearing practices, and fifty-fifty our expectations for children's behavior. In this way, culture creates diversity.

Cultural diversity and teachers

For teachers, it is essential to see and understand your own culture in order to meet and sympathise how the cultures of children and their families influence children'due south behavior. Only then can you give every child a off-white chance to succeed.

Recall about your own upbringing. How did your family'due south expectations affect what yous did? Were your parents, siblings, and other relatives shut or afar? Were they strict, lenient, or somewhere in betwixt? Were your school'southward expectations whatever different? All of this, and more, plays a part in how y'all view the behavior of the children y'all teach.

These ideas lie at the middle of NAEYC's position statement Advancing Equity in Early on Childhood Education. Its guiding principles include

• Recognizing that "self-awareness, humility, respect, and a willingness to learn are key to condign a teacher who deservedly and effectively supports all children and families"
• Developing a strong understanding of culture and diverseness
• Understanding that "families are the principal context for children's development and learning"

I major takeaway from the position statement is that early babyhood educators must support consistently warm and caring relationships between families and their children, respect families' languages and cultures, and contain those languages and cultures into the curriculum, their teaching practices, and the learning environment.

Cultural diversity and young children

Children bring their own fix of culturally based expectations, skills, talents, abilities, and values with them into the classroom. And they begin to develop their self-concept (at to the lowest degree in office) from how others run into them. To form positive self-concepts, children must honor and respect their ain families and cultures and take others honor and respect these key facets of their identities likewise. If the classroom doesn't reflect and validate their families and cultures, children may feel invisible, unimportant, incompetent, and ashamed of who they are.

Many people, including educators, have long believed it is better to human activity colorblind and/or "cultureblind"—that is, to not acknowledge colour or culture. Simply research has shown that this artificial blindness keeps us from recognizing, acknowledging, and appreciating important differences. Worse, information technology may lead to unintentional bias toward or disrespect for those who are different from us.

Nosotros know now that acknowledgments of color and culture are essential for legitimizing differences. Color and civilization brand each one of u.s.a. special and enable united states to offer unique gifts and opportunities to groups nosotros are part of. At the same time, color and culture assistance children learn about each other and the world. In brusque, colour and culture enrich classrooms.

To appreciate what each kid can contribute to the class, teachers need to acquire virtually each family's cultural values. Helping children to see themselves in your pedagogy, curriculum, environs, and materials enables them (and their families) to feel welcomed and valued.

Take a look effectually your classroom.

• Does the artwork on the walls accurately reverberate the children's lives, or are the walls covered with store-bought, stereotypical images?
  • Why not take the children create their ain posters with their own artwork, things from home, and photos families tin supply?
• Are labels (and other child-focused texts) repeated in each child's dwelling language, or are they in English language simply?
  • Why non forge connections and support children's learning by asking family members to assist children employ their dwelling house languages throughout the room?

It'south important to see cultural and linguistic differences as resource, non as deficits. As NAEYC's equity position statement puts information technology, "Children's learning is facilitated when instruction practices, curricula, and learning environments build on children's strengths and are developmentally, culturally, and linguistically advisable for each child."

The departure between equitable and equal

Equal is not the same as equitable. Every child in your grouping has different needs, skills, interests, and abilities. Equal would mean giving all children the same activities, materials, and books. Equitable means ensuring that you consider each kid'south strengths, context, and needs and provide all children with the opportunities that will support them in reaching their potential.

It's crucial to recognize the inequities that children and their families face—in school and out. The position argument reminds us that "ascendant social biases are rooted in the social, political, and economic structures of the Us. Powerful letters—conveyed through the media, symbols, attitudes, and actions—go along to reverberate and promote both explicit and implicit bias." For example, research conducted past Yale University professor Walter Gilliam conspicuously shows that young African American boys are subject to higher rates of break and expulsion than their White European American peers.

How cultural diversity shapes behavior

Your culture and the children's cultures aren't the simply cultures at piece of work in your classroom. Every school and early babyhood education program has a civilisation too. The cultures of virtually American schools are based on White European American values. Every bit the makeup of the Usa population becomes more than various, there is more than cultural racket—which impacts children's behavior.

White European American culture has an private orientation that teaches children to function independently, stand out, talk well-nigh themselves, and view property as personal. In contrast, many other cultures value interdependence, fitting in, helping others and being helped, beingness small, and sharing property. In fact, some languages accept no words for I, me, or mine.

Children who notice themselves in an unfamiliar environment—such equally a classroom that reflects a civilisation unlike from their dwelling culture—are likely to feel confused, isolated, alienated, conflicted, and less competent considering what they've learned so far in their home culture simply doesn't apply. They may not sympathise the rules, or they may exist unable to communicate their needs in the school's language.

Rethinking challenging behavior

Considering your responses to children's conflicts and challenging behavior are culture leap, information technology is all besides easy to misinterpret children's words or actions. The next time a kid seems defiant, ask yourself, Is that behavior culturally influenced? Could I exist misunderstanding the kid's words or deportment?

For example, White European Americans tend to use implicit commands, such every bit, "Johnny, can you lot please put the blocks away?" Children raised in the White European American culture understand that they are being told to put abroad the blocks. But children raised in the African American culture may interpret this utterance differently. In their civilization, adult commands are usually explicit: "DuShane, put abroad the blocks." To African American children, an implicit command in the form of a question may seem to offer a choice about how to comport.

Culture likewise defines personal space, including how much space feels appropriate in the block area, at circle/meeting time, and in the dramatic play area. In some cultures, children experience comfortable playing shut to one another; in others, the aforementioned space may experience claustrophobic and pb children to striking or shove a playmate who seems also nearly. Similarly, you may stand too close or too far away, depending on children'due south cultures. For example, if Cadency doesn't pay attention to your request to keep the sand in the sandbox, you may be also far away to connect with her.

In White European American culture, teachers await children to sit all the same and maintain eye contact to prove that they're paying attention. But in other cultures, children might bear witness their interest past joining in; they may acquire through hearing or telling a story, watching others, or using trial and error. If they don't empathise the lesson, they might have a hard fourth dimension paying attention. Or they may be paying attention in a different style.

Culture counts

There are many rewards for teachers who have civilisation into account. You can grade authentic, caring relationships with children and families; build connections between what children already know and what they need to know; select activities, materials, and instructional strategies that honor children'south cultures and life experiences; and teach children the skills they need to succeed in a global club.

From the Pages of Young Children: Research on How Culture Affects Learning

For more examples of how culture affects learning, check out "Diverse Children, Uniform Standards: Using Early Learning and Evolution Standards in Multicultural Classrooms" in the November 2019 upshot of Young Children. The authors, Jeanne L. Reid, Catherine Scott-Petty, and Sharon Lynn Kagan, provide several examples of culturally influenced differences in how children pay attending, approach learning, seek guidance, and express their knowledge and skills. They also offer tips to help teachers address standards for early learning that are not sensitive to these cultural differences.

This commodity supports the post-obit NAEYC Early Learning Programme Accreditation standards and topic areas

STANDARDS 7: FAMILIES; ane: RELATIONSHIPS

7A: Knowing and Agreement the Plan's Families

1A: Building Positive Relationships Between Teachers and Families

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Source: https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/tyc/dec2019/valuing-diversity-developing-understanding-behavior