Teachers in the United States are charged with delivering not only scholastic content, but steeping young people in the norms and routines of democratic, civil society, in the hope that they develop the skills necessary to enjoy the benefits of personal and professional competence, informed participation in the democratic process and electoral franchise. They are also asked to teach cultural sensitivity and overcome racial, sexual, linguistic and socioeconomic boundaries, in order to promote more equitable access to educational opportunities.
Adding to the enormity of their task, teachers’ efforts are often frustrated by those who would maintain that socioeconomic status and stable and inherent features of intelligence and aptitude act as the primary and insuperable determinants of academic and personal achievement, not so subtly suggesting that the efforts of teachers are often misguided or misplaced. While a considerable body of evidence has been amassed to undermine this type of social and biological determinism, the weight of science and social-behavioral research is not reflected in the bulk of current educational policy and the physical and systemic features of most modern school systems.
Schools today are even more stratified along racial and socioeconomic lines than they were prior to desegregation (Weinstein, Gregory & Strambler, 2005). Furthermore, local funding of neighborhood schools ensures that educational institutions in financially less-privileged, often largely minoritized communities, lack the funds to provide teachers with the resources necessary to perform their jobs effectively. These problems are only compounded by ill-conceived government efforts to reform education, such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which demands improved educational outcomes on the part of classes and schools deemed ‘underperforming,’ while providing little in the way of monetary or professional support to assist in the achievement of such goals -- regardless of social and/or economic challenges facing learners and those charged with the facilitation of their learning.
Despite these seemingly intractable challenges, however, a growing body of research suggests that the dedicated educator is capable of affecting equitable models of learning within the ethnically, linguistically and culturally diverse classroom, while successfully negotiating institutional and curricular constraints. The following essays, articles and books represent an ideological commitment to the goals of transformative education, advancing practical steps that can be taken within the classroom, in order to ensure that learners of all backgrounds are granted opportunities to thrive academically within classroom environments supportive of their unique ethnic, cultural and linguistic heritage.