Angela Webster-Smith

Connecting Content, Context, and Communication in a Sixth-Grade Social Studies Class through Political Cartoons.

Sixth-grade students are challenged in understanding social studies content relevant to particular contexts, then connecting the content and context to their contemporary lives while communicating new knowledge to peers and teachers. Using political cartoons published after September 11, 2001, one sixth-grade social studies teacher designed probing questions and developed meaningful learning experiences relating historical events to current concerns of the students supplementing their curriculum and textbook. Through verbal and written interactions, the students demonstrated in-depth understanding of September 11, 2001, and consequential global ramifications. Subsequently, this teacher used the same strategy to engage learners in additional historical events effectively integrating social studies and literacy to introduce conflict analysis, increase critical thinking, expand text connections, and enhance literacy skills.

Cultural Competence and the Recursive Nature of Conscientization

The journey to cultural competence encompasses traveling an ever-expanding path increasing in size with the addition of each of five stages of development: conscientization, self-assessment, self-efficacy, agency, and, finally, critical consciousness as the unifying body within the educational enterprise. The increasing stages create a spiral following the Fibonacci sequence enveloping one another throughout the journey. In this study, one teacher educator conducted a self-study of her cultural competence from which recommendations were revealed (1) cultural competence is an ongoing transformational journey; (2) teacher and leadership educators benefit from insights for infusing the possibilities and parameters associated with cultural competence with their candidates; (3) school leaders become valuable conduits for establishing and reinforcing the responsibility for cultural competence within the profession; (4) professional developers glean guidance for supporting and advancing the levels of cultural competence with classroom teachers; and (5) all educators grow exponentially by reexamining their own cultural competence recursively for modeling and ensuring the presence and power of cultural competence as process and product.