THE EFFECTS OF CULTURAL LEARNING STYLES

The Effects Of Cultural Learning Styles On The Academic Success Of African American Students



Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

Significance of the Study3

Purpose Of The Study4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW5

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY20

Participants20

Pilot Studies22

Procedure22

Assessment23

Validation of Instruments25

Scoring of Instruments26

Achievement Results27

Individual Student Scores29

Group Scores29

CHAPTER 4: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION31

Discussion31

The Effect of African Culture31

Limitations of the Study32

Conclusion35

REFERENCES38

APPENDIX47

The Effects Of Cultural Learning Styles On The Academic Success Of African American Students

Chapter 1: Introduction

Davidson and Kramer (2007) stated? "the gift of diversity is one of a classroom's most powerful assets no matter what the age level" (p. 131). Everyone's heritage is precious and worthy of discussion. No one is too young or too old to learn about other peoples' culture. Public school classrooms are made up of diverse people and provide environments in which to promote cultural awareness. The notion of exploring diversity in the field of mathematics is the motivation for conducting this study. This investigation examined how young African American students' achievement in mathematics is affected by engaging in selected geometry concepts presented within a cultural context.

The role of culture is becoming more prevalent in the learning of mathematics due to the similarity of a great deal of the mathematics content across cultures (Geddes & Fortunato? 2003). As students learn about particular mathematics concepts? they should also learn about the people who used the concepts because numerous peoples made contributions to the field of mathematics. Peoples with diverse cultures also had diverse methods of using mathematics in their daily lives? which relates to their attitudes? traditions? and tools. These peoples include people with African? Asian? European? Latino? and Native American backgrounds.

The purpose of this study was to investigate to what extent studying topics in a cultural context affected African American students' achievement. There is a growing interest in the use of multicultural activities in the mathematics classroom as well as the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' (NCTM? 2000) promotion of equity and strong support for all students. Equity? identified as one of the principles of the NCTM (2000) Principles and Standards for School Mathematics? demands that appropriate and reasonable accommodations be made in order to promote access and attainment for all students regardless of their backgrounds? physical challenges? or personal characteristics. Students must have support to learn and opportunities to study mathematics.

The study discussed in this article examined African American fifth grade students' mathematics achievement at a public elementary school in a southeastern city. This study is an excerpt from a larger study that investigated how the implementation of African cultural activities related to geometry affected African American students' achievement in geometry and perceptions of mathematics in general. Although the larger study's results focused specifically on African American students? a diverse group of students completed the activities. African American student achievement will be the focus of this article as well and the achievement discussion in this article was based on pre-assessment and post-assessment results.

Significance of the Study

The African American experience is not widely understood by mainstream society; thus ...