Book Review: Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching and Learning by S. Hollie, Ph.D.

Introduction

Dr. Hollie has introduced a significant factor that influences one’s educational experience that
has not been emphasized with other aspects of pedagogy: the multi-culturalism dimension of
students and how they are largely underserved in the educational system. Hollie takes the
reader through the historical, sociological and political contexts showing how and why the
underserved need the support of educators to practice culturally and linguistic responsive
pedagogy (CLR) methods. CLR is defined as the “validation and affirmation of the home culture
and language for the purpose of building and bridging the student to success in the culture of
academia and mainstream society” (pg. 23).

Thoughts on CLR Methodology

I am in absolute agreement of this observation and distinction he makes in terms of resetting

how educators need to think and approach their students from a place of knowing they are all
multi-cultural (youth, gender, religion, nationality etc..) which has nothing to do with their race.
Typically, as Hollie points out, “There is a tendency to be more focused on racial identity rather
than the myriad cultural identities in our collective diversity” (pg. 20). Too often, educators
confuse and mistake one culture(s) for another or directly with ones’ race rather than have an
understanding that “…each ring of culture is a potential source of responsiveness for the
educator…race is not in the figure” (pg. 35, Fig 1.1 “Rings of Culture”)

In general, I agree with all of the supporting information regarding the framework for
pedagogy, the learning environment, the strategy of instruction and the activities for the
instruction are dependent (pg 49) upon a) classroom management b) types of instructional
materials used c) the vocabulary generated and d) implementation of academic language by the
students for the content area. Burnham (2) writes in “Culturally Responsive Teaching
Strategies” to also encourage educators to “build relationships with the students, access their
prior knowledge, make learning contextual and encourage students to leverage their ‘cultural
capital’ as class experts on specific topics”. All of which needs to occur in a responsive learning
environment (137-151) with bulletin boards, word walls, a library of relevant content resources,
learning centers, implementing technology, in a classroom arranged for optimal movement and
space for teachers and students would all apply to my content area of 7-12 grade Life Sciences.

Much of what is addressed in the book has mapped on to the bulk of the TCTX curriculum thus
far with respect to instructional strategies, effective literacy strategies (Ch. 3-5), classroom
movement and use of manipulatives (pg. 80), explicit instructions for responding to questions
individually or in groups (pg. 75-76). Hollie further expands on academic vocabulary strategies
(Ch. 5) which map on to Bloom’s taxonomy beginning with defining and explaining target
words, then progressions to applying multiple definitions and word analysis. In the sciences,
this is a hallmark strategy as the sciences have a language of their own, separate from the
language arts content area - which is really the content area of emphasis in Hollie’s book.

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 That said, even though the book is extremely well rounded in providing educators various tools,
strategies, appendices with supplemental reading materials based on various cultures and how
to properly implement those tools pedagogically, the Hollie’s book provides little to no
resources for other content areas like math and science.

The main challenge to CLR teaching that I discovered while reading the book and researching
examples of how this is implemented is that these methods do not appear to be applicable
and/or successful in the Sciences. Dr. Hollie and colleagues founded the Culture and Language
Academy of Success (CLAS) in 2003 under the Los Angeles Unified Independent School District
(LAUISD) as a Charter School. Data from a third-party website (1) shows CLAS students have a
deficit with proficiency in Science and Math versus English for years 2004 – 2007 (Figure 1). I
was not able to locate any other longitudinal data for this school, nor access a CLAS website to
obtain further information on how the school was implementing CLR in science.

Figure 1. Data from the only two grade levels with Science proficiency assessments for CLAS shown in
comparison to other content areas measured against statewide proficiency levels in California from
2004-2007.

The last datapoint was five years before the book was published in 2012. CLAS is not listed with
the 2020-2021 Charter Schools within LAUISD. This leaves me with several unanswered
questions.
• What did their science classroom look like in terms of management, literacy and
instructional strategies and mapping onto California’s curriculum standards per grade
level?
• Why is the school no longer serving the community?
• Why are data missing for 6-7th grade Science, when 5th and 8th are represented?
• Where did these students go after 8th grade?
• With proficiency levels matching state levels in English, were those students able to
expand on CLR in their science and math classes beyond 8th grade?

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 With no ability to determine these answers, I sought out to find examples of multi-culturally
based science instruction strategies that are or are not successful in today’s classrooms.

Hollie and Lemoine expand to say that the use of culturally neutral texts (pg 85-91) are “not
appropriate and not recommended”. While this strategy fits for works of fiction in language arts
content areas, this recommendation is not applicable with science textbooks (scientific novels
are generally not part of the curriculum) which are neutral and therefore contradictory to
Lemoine’s tips that CLR non-neutral reading materials should be “culturally appropriate” with
“well known “authors, publishers, illustrations, information and accuracy”.

Meyers (2011) research also supports neutrality in science because the content area is not
intended to be culturally biased. “These learners engage in science learning through
anthropological approaches, where science is studied but may or may not be incorporated into
their cultural ways of thinking. Alternatively, students may undergo autonomous acculturation,
where scientific and cultural ways of thinking coexist and are not disputed. In either case, a
negotiation of cultural identity does not become part of the process of science learning. Identity
and science learning remain separated.” Science teachings are neutral and may be at odds with
some cultures, but the students are still responsible for mastery of the concepts per TEKS,
standardized tests and summative assessments.

Hollie does not appear to address various cultural norms in students that educators may fail to
know or understand. Deady’s (5) contributes a Cultural Competence Checklist to address “that
people either hold cultural biases or to fail to acknowledge the difference in cultures around
us…to the detriment of students”. Deady asks educators to inventory their personal hobbies,
entertainment, body language (eye contact, pointing, sitting cross-legged have disrespectful
connotations in some cultures), communication styles, and their ability to effectively intervene
and defuse tense situations involving a clash between cultures. Further “cultural competence is
a continually evolving practice and is something you continue to learn over the entirety of your
teaching career”.

CLR-based Methodology in Science

I conducted internet searches to find specific examples of multi-cultural scientific based lesson
plans and instructional strategies for underserved students. Science itself is a culture with its
own language and processes. Another challenge here is that science has concepts that are at
odds with a students’ cultural upbringing and beliefs. For example, from fictional movies such
as The Waterboy, when Adam Sandler’s character, Bobby Bouchet says aloud in his biology
class that “Mamma says alligators are angry because they have all them teeth and no
toothbrush” as an example of students who receive incorrect information or guidance at home.
Furthermore, The Scopes Trail (2) from 1925, and the attempt by proponents of Intelligent
Design to keep “Of Pandas and People” a textbook in public schools have been defeated legally
(3), there still exists a significant sub-population of 33% of people (12) who have religious

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 culture beliefs that are at odds with Darwinian concepts, the fossil record and current examples
of evolution in the biosphere.

Meyer (2011, with Crawford (2012) addressed that the gap in science education in underserved
students can begin to be closed when educators through “inquiry, instructionally congruent
science teaching strategies and explicit instruction in nature of science” to make science
accessible given linguistic differences. They posit that “…science learning may be more
accessible to student groups whose cultural ways of knowing align with scientific culture and
less accessible to students from backgrounds that are underrepresented in the sciences. This is
because science learning is implicated in Western ways of knowing, an already accepted cultural
norm for many mainstream students. However, science instruction may involve cultural borders
when it becomes ‘subtractive’ or marginalizes the world-views of students in relation to Western
modern science”.

Furthermore, another challenge is that not all science concepts can be culturally linked in the
same manner that fiction texts can be linked to multi-cultural students in language arts to
bolster CLR methods on instruction. Not all science concepts can be connected to inquiry-based
learning lab procedure exercises (which should account for 40% of all instruction under TEKS)
Cellular respiration, biochemistry, animal and plant anatomy and physiology, solar system and
space science to name a few.

Implementing CLR Methods

Hollie’s book is specific to English & Language Arts content to implement his CLR literacy
strategies. I found only a few examples in the Appendices that would meaningfully cross over
to scientific instruction and pedagogy. The book alone does not offer resources for
implementation in the sciences that are different in instructional strategies presented iTeach
TCTX modules, which apply more uniformly across all content areas.

Appendices A-B provide student engagement and participation strategies that are part of the
TCTX curriculum including Think-Pair-Share, Think-Pair-Solo, and other methods of engagement
that encourage class participation with explicit instructions on speaking and nominating
classmates to participate. Most of Hollie’s suggestions apply to grade school age students, not
high school, but I am open to implementation as needed and will refer to this guide.

Appendices C-D are lists of fiction books categorized by ethnicity and grade level and not
applicable to my content area. In Appendices E-F, I found 7 of 28 literacy strategies beneficial
which were presented in iTeach TCTX modules.

The most beneficial approaches for CLR-like instruction that I’ve found outside Hollie’s book
come from Meyers and Crawford (8,9) who outline multi-cultural strategies in the sciences in
their published works from 2011-2012. They are published in the journal Cultural Studies of
Science Education (CSSE, 10) whose mission is to “Examine science education as a cultural,

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 cross-age, cross-class, and cross-disciplinary phenomenon” and provide and extensive list of
references in their research.

I would increase and promote engagement through the use of student surveys, questionnaires,
intake forms to find their topics of interests and incorporate those into lessons plans. I would
also encourage students to research their communities to find issues that are important to
them. Students can analyze data, get different perspectives and make suggestions on how
science can be used to solve problems in their communities, done individually or as
collaborative group work. Hollie addresses code-switching as critical but only be used when
“situationally appropriate”. I would encourage code-switching at the onset to promote
engagement and cultural connectedness amongst students with the goal that it become less
frequent as the student’s progress through the class. Block (4) writes that code-switching will
be a normal part of life given current global diversity. The use of scientific language will begin
to increase as they connect to the scientific/academic language in a personal manner.

I would implement the strategies described by Meyers and Crawford as “…the role of educators
as ‘tour-guides’ into the world of science in relation to their students, who may have varying
degrees of border-crossings. A teacher may act as a coaching apprentice, travel-agent culture
broker, or tour-guide to a student who is experiencing border crossing experiences into
science.” Further, they also observed students’ engagement increased when the educator
placed her students in the role as the researcher who needs to help a scientist solve a problem
(8,9).

I would also expand on the scientific contributions of ancient civilizations (3) in which present
day students can draw from their ethnicity and nationality to connect to the multi-culturalism
in the sciences from a historical perspective and applications to modern day science.

In my experiences in the biological sciences as a student and a professional researcher, I have

25+ years working and studying with multi-cultural colleagues from such places as China, Japan,
Guyana, Chile, Great Britain, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, France, India, Iran, Lebanon, Bulgaria,
Philippines, ranging in age from 20-65, with varied religious practices, coming from or living at
different socio-economic strata with or without their own nuclear family. When working
together, we all spoke the language of science to engaged in effective communication to
accomplish goals with deadlines. We were accommodating toward incidences of a language
barrier, we learned from each other, we valued each other’s experiences, expertise and roles to
steer the ship together. Given my experiences, I cannot say that I have a bias toward facets of
multi-culturalism because it can prevent positive outcomes for all involved. If anything, my bias
is toward obvious lack of effort/contributions and laziness which is a personality flaw that exists
all types of cultures.

Summary

Dr. Hollie’s book is a beneficial resource for all educators to self-check pre-existing biases in
their approach to teaching, regardless of their content area. The majority of the content and

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 the concepts presented are critical to be an effective educator in multi-cultural classrooms in
the content area of Language Arts/English. This prompted me to seek out types of instructional
strategies in the sciences for use in my classroom.

I feel the content provided by Meyer & Crawford, et al., and utilizing the guidance provided by
referenced websites in addition to the CSSE as valuable resources to serving the needs of multi-
cultural, ELL and non-standard language students. My responsibility is to acknowledge and
utilize the cultural background of culturally and ethnically diverse students. To help them
understand that their ability to capitalize on their cultural knowledge, interests and linguistic
styles and prior knowledge is an asset to their education to make the sciences more accessible
and relevant to them.

References

Blogs/Web:
1: CLAS Test Scores
2: Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies, Krista Burham
3: Ancient Civilizations World
4: Code-Switching Isn’t Always Bad, Aaron Block
5: Assessing Your Cultural Competence Checklist, Kathy Deady

Wikipedia:
6: Of Pandas and People
7: Scopes Monkey Trial

Primary Literature:

8: Meyer, X., Crawford, B. Teaching science as a cultural way of knowing: merging authentic
inquiry, nature of science, and multicultural strategies. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 2011

9: Xenia S. Meyer, Daniel K. Capps, Barbara A. Crawford, and Robert Ross. Using Inquiry and
Tenets of Multicultural Education to Engage Latino English-Language Learning Students in
Learning About Geology and the Nature of Science. Journal of Geoscience Education 60, 212–
219 (2012)

10. Cultural Studies of Science Education (CSSE)

12 Kaleem, J. Surprising Number Of Americans Don’t Believe In Evolution. Religion, Dec 06,
2017. Video.

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