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Preparing Middle Grades Educators to Teach about WorldCultures: An Interdisciplinary Approach

MICHELLE REIDEL and CHRISTINE DRAPER

Teaching and Learning, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Georgia, USA

With the realities of standards-based accountability, it is imperative to model and demonstrate for students how subject areasand teaching methods transcend across traditional boundaries. In an effort to prepare future social studies educators to teach forglobal awareness and to meaningfully integrate critical literacy skills into their instruction, we initiated a collaborative model in ouruniversity’s middle grades teacher education program with language arts and social studies methods courses. The development ofcultural competency not only provides preservice teachers with the knowledge of diverse populations but also enables them to havean increased ability to affirm the cultures of others.

Keywords: global awareness, cultural competency, standards-based accountability, teacher education

Introduction

Despite the ways in which Web 2.0 technologies and satel-lite television provide instantaneous access to informationand images from around the globe, most adolescents inthe United States have only a superficial understanding ofother cultures. This type of surface understanding—if itgoes unchallenged—can encourage negative attitudes andbolster stereotypes about other people and places (Bealand Bates 2010). The sheer volume of images and textsadolescents encounter on a daily basis may only reinforcethese misunderstandings unless they are prepared to criti-cally evaluate this material (Beal and Bates 2010). Middlegrades social studies teachers can collaborate with languagearts teachers to design instructional units that provide stu-dents with opportunities to both conduct in-depth studiesof specific cultures and enhance their critical reading skills.Yet all teachers—not just those who teach language artsspecifically—need to provide opportunities for their stu-dents to critically engage with a variety of texts (Janks2010).

Over the last academic year, we initiated such a collabo-rative model in our university’s middle grades teacher edu-cation program in an effort to prepare future social studieseducators to teach for global awareness and to meaning-fully integrate critical literacy skills into their instruction.Both authors teach a section of language arts and socialstudies methods courses in which students are concurrently

Address correspondence to Michelle Reidel, Teaching and Learn-ing, Georgia Southern University, P.O. Box 8134, Statesboro, GA30460, USA. E-mail: mreidel@georgiasouthern.edu

enrolled. The authors believed that it would be beneficialto model interdisciplinary curriculum and content acrossboth courses throughout the semester. In this article weprovide an example of our collaboration describing a mini-unit we cotaught on the diverse cultures of India during aweeklong period of the semester courses.

Teaching about World Cultures at the Middle SchoolLevel

In 1991 the National Council for the Social Studies taskforce on social studies in the middle school released a re-port with a number of recommendations for creating de-velopmentally appropriate and meaningful social studiesprograms for young adolescents (NCSS 1991). Particularlysignificant in this report was the emphasis given to thephysical, social, emotional, and cognitive characteristics ofearly adolescents and the relationship between these char-acteristics as well as the selection of curriculum materialsand instructional approaches. Four “unifying motifs” thatattend to the social and emotional needs of young adoles-cents are highlighted as a frame for the development andimplementation of powerful social studies instruction atthe middle school level. These four motifs include concernfor self, concern for right and wrong, concern for others,and concern for the world (NCSS 1991). Along with in-tegrating these motifs into the conceptual design of socialstudies curriculum, the task force recommended instruc-tional strategies that specifically address the physical, emo-tional, social, and cognitive needs of young adolescents.There also should be an emphasis on experiential and

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cooperative learning along with interdisciplinary instruc-tion (NCSS 1991).

When teaching about world cultures, the above rec-ommendations are particularly significant. While youngadolescents are naturally curious about the world, they canalso be quick to judge and condemn. To help middle gradesstudents move beyond lack of awareness and denigration toacceptance and respect for cultural differences, they needopportunities to “confront their stereotypes” and “acquirein-depth knowledge of some cultures” (Merryfield andWilson 2005, 50). Merry Merryfield’s extensive researchon teaching about and for global awareness highlightsa number of pedagogical practices that can support thedevelopment of perspective consciousness and apprecia-tion of other cultures (Merryfield 1998; 2005). Of primaryimportance is ensuring that students understand the com-plexity of culture (Merryfield 1998). To achieve this typeof rich understanding Merryfield recommends providingstudents with opportunities to simultaneously study theirown as well as other cultures. In doing so, students developawareness of cultural universals as well as the differencesbetween their own culture and those under study as theymove toward respect for cultural differences (Merryfield1998; 2005). The integration of multiple perspectives alsohelps students move beyond one-dimensional represen-tations of other cultures and recognize that cultures arenot monolithic or static. Connecting global content tostudents’ interests, abilities, and experiences is equallyimportant when teaching about culture (Merryfield 1998,365).

The global information economy today requires youth tohave more advanced literacy skills than those required byprevious generations (Beal and Bates 2010; Kamil et al.2008, 1).The unprecedented volume of written and vi-sual information available through Web 2.0 technologiesand multimodal texts alongside traditional print resourcesmakes it vital for citizens to critically evaluate what theyread. To engage in this type of critical reading, studentsmust be able to not only draw upon a wide range of cog-nitive skills to comprehend what they read but must alsobe able to analyze what different types of texts (written,visual, and oral) “do” to readers, viewers, or listeners andwhose interests are served (or not served) by what thesetexts “do” (Janks 2010). Essential to understanding what atext “does” is an investigation into the author’s purpose andsubjectivity. To acquire these skills adolescents need accessto a wide range of materials along with instruction thataddresses stereotypes and promotes knowledge develop-ment and global understanding (Janks 2010). It is impor-tant to model instruction that requires students to thinkcritically about text in both language arts and social stud-ies content areas. Therefore, teacher education programsneed to support future teachers in developing skills to fa-cilitate discussions and understandings that are authentic,complex, sometimes painful, and sometimes controversial(Delpit 1996).

Drawing upon the above recommendations and research,we developed an interdisciplinary unit intended to provideopportunities for preservice social studies teachers to con-front their own stereotypes or misconceptions about Indiaas well as in developing their critical literacy skills. Criticalliteracy instruction in this miniunit focused on identifyingauthors’ purpose or intent and considering how this pur-pose informs the representation of the specific culture understudy. Our intent was to model cross-curricular collabora-tion for the preservice teachers in our classes as well as tointroduce materials and instructional strategies they coulduse to teach about culture in their future classrooms. Morespecifically, many young teachers often rely heavily on text-books when designing social studies instruction becausethey have limited knowledge of and access to alternativeresources (Zevin 2000). We wanted to demonstrate for ourstudents the wide variety of quality materials available foreducators and to introduce them to one of many nonprofitorganizations that provide high-quality curriculum materi-als for social studies educators. For this mini-unit we usedmaterials from the South Asia Institute at the Universityof Texas-Austin.

South Asia Institute

The University of Texas at Austin houses one of the mostdistinguished South Asia programs in the country and iscurrently funded by a Title VI grant through the U.S. De-partment of Education. In addition to sponsoring majorconferences, scholarly symposia, and a weekly South Asiaseminar; the South Asia Institute at UT-Austin also pro-vides resources for community outreach programs to K–12schools, postsecondary institutions, and business and civicorganizations. It was through this program that we ob-tained a cultural artifact trunk about India. This trunkincluded several books detailing quick facts about India,a videocassette of Indian festivals, relief maps of India, aHindi alphabet, information on Hinduism, representativetraditional clothing for men and women, geographic infor-mation, currency, music, and cuisine located throughoutthe country. There also were lesson plan ideas includedwith the trunk. This trunk is shipped to interested individ-uals free of charge for a period of four weeks, and the onlycost required is shipping the materials back to the institute.

The Land of Bollywood Meets Rural South Georgia:An Interdisciplinary Unit on Recognizing, Exploring,and Confronting Assumptions

Georgia’s state-mandated social studies curriculum at thesixth- and seventh-grade level focuses on world cultures.Preservice social studies teachers enrolled in the MiddleGrades Teacher Education program at our institution arerequired to complete one world geography course, but this

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is the only required content course that includes non-U.S.and non-Western perspectives. Many of these preserviceteachers admitted in class discussions that they have neverleft the county they grew up in, let alone the state. Most hadlittle, if any, experience with or knowledge of non-Westernpeople and cultures. Yet, these same preservice teachers areexpected to teach their students about regions and coun-tries around the world that neither has had direct experiencewith. Given this context, the unit we designed was intendedto provide opportunities for preservice teachers to recog-nize, explore, and confront their assumptions and beliefsabout India as well as acquire new knowledge about thediverse people and places of South Asia.

Think/Write-Pair-Share

The interdisciplinary unit began with a Think/Write-Pair-Share activity in which preservice teachers listed what theyknew or believed to be true about India. Students (indi-viduals) then shared this list with a partner and togetherthe class created a common list of knowledge, beliefs, andassumptions about India. Preservice teachers’ commentsranged from single adjectives such as “polluted,” “back-ward,” and “colorful” to statements such as “Indian foodsmells, so I would assume the country smells too” and“India is dirty and has lots of beggars according to themovies.” Most preservice teachers’ perceptions of Indiawere stereotypical with descriptors like poor, hot, andcrowded topping this initial list. We then asked studentshow they had learned this “information” about India. Theoverwhelming response was “movies.” Working with theirpartner, preservice teachers discussed specific movies thatdepicted India and considered the author’s/director’s in-tent or purpose. During the sharing session that followed,preservice teachers identified a number of reasons why In-dia is typically portrayed as poor, dirty, and crowded inmany U.S. films. A number of students noted that oftenplot or character “needs” were the main reason why Indiawas portrayed negatively. More specifically, one studentnoted that “India is depicted as behind-the-times and poorso that when the Americans in the movie arrive there theyhave to deal with a lot of strange stuff.” While acknowledg-ing these dimensions of film, many preservice teachers werereluctant to conclude that these depictions of India are in-accurate. As one student commented “that may be why they[U.S. films] do it but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.” We be-gan the unit with this activity to make preservice teachers’assumptions about India public, an important first step inthe development of perspective consciousness.

Initial Perceptions of Culture

The Think/Write-Pair-Share was followed by a short readaloud of the children’s book Look What Came From

India (Harvey 1999) to encourage students to understandhow their initial perceptions of the cultural “other” maybe based upon negative stereotypes and a limited knowl-edge base. We need not travel far to learn from others; wecan experience this type of connection and understandingby sharing literature with members of our classroom com-munity. We incorporated children’s literature into the unitbecause books can enable children to connect with and un-derstand other individuals as well as their own identities.Students can make personal connections to characters inliterature and move beyond their initial individual reactionsby taking into account multiple ideas and interpretations,thus broadening their perspectives (Rosenblatt 1978). Itwas for these reasons that we incorporated the read aloudof the book Look What Came from India by Miles Harveyinto the unit.

This picture book provided our preservice teachers withopportunities to learn about important and popular in-ventions, food, religions, animals, musical instruments,medicines, games, and even words that originated in India.The read aloud exposed our students to unique featuresof Indian cultures along with various items and conceptsthey would be exploring further. This learning experiencealso began to disrupt our students’ narrow and somewhatnegative perception of India by revealing how different as-pects of Indian culture and traditions are already a part ofthe students’ daily lives. During the read aloud, preserviceteachers recorded anything that surprised them or that theyhad not known previously. Following the read aloud, theyagain shared their responses and compared this second listwith the list created after the Think/Write-Pair-Share ac-tivity. During this whole class discussion it became clearthat our students were beginning to recognize how littlethey really knew about India and how much there was tolearn. It is interesting to note that the picture book shar-ing discussion began to change preservice teachers’ overallperceptions of India. One student commented “Wow, Indiais not that different from the United States—I had no ideathat they had the same products we do here.” Another notedhis surprise that “there are a lot of cool things about India.I could see myself going there.” Similarly, while many ofour students knew that curry and naan originated in India,many were very surprised to learn that plastic surgery andtoilets also originated in India and that India is the world’slargest democracy. Again during this discussion we askedpreservice teachers to consider Miles Harvey’s purpose inwriting Look What Came from India and how thinkingabout his purpose can help readers make better sense ofthe information in his text. Preservice teachers were quickto point out that Harvey’s purpose was to “push back”against all the negative images of India is U.S. media. “Hewants us to know all the good things about India” one stu-dent remarked. It also became clear during this discussionthat preservice teachers were less likely to “trust” all theinformation in Harvey’s text. As one student noted, “Heignores all the bad stuff about India so it makes me wonder

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what he isn’t telling us.” The read aloud did pique preser-vice teachers’ interest; once they realized that some familiaraspects of their own lives—such as pajamas, pepper, andParcheesi—had their origin in India, they wanted to learnmore. The students were ready to take a fieldtrip to our“museum.”

Museum Exhibit

Using items from the cultural trunk borrowed from theSouth Asia Institute at the University of Texas-Austin, wecreated a museum exhibit. There were six installations inour “exhibit” dedicated to traditional clothing, foods, reli-gion and language, art and music, currency and transporta-tion. All the learning stations were designed for students torethink their view of the world and to challenge preexistingnegative stereotypes about India. Through these experi-ences preservice teachers not only began to question theirbeliefs but also began to develop an appreciation of India’scultural diversity.

Each installation featured at least one hands-on activityand a “visitor’s guide” with information. Before leaving theclassroom students formed six small groups. These groupstraveled through the exhibit as a team and, upon return-ing to the classroom, worked together to make sense ofwhat they had learned. Each student created a “Mini-TravelBooklet” (instructions at: http://library.thinkquest.org/J001156/makingbooks/minibook/index.htm) that servedas hands-on reference material after they completed theirvisit to each of the installations. For example, at one in-stallation students learned about religion and language. Atthis station, students saw an example of a Hindi alphabetchart used to teach young children. They also learned aboutvarious Hindu deities through posters, finger puppets, de-votional cloths, ornaments, and school lunch boxes. Whilevisiting this station, students wrote their name using theHindi alphabet on the first page of their minitravel book-let. On the second page of the booklet they created a Venndiagram to compare and contrast what they had learnedabout Hinduism with their own or another religion.

At another station students explored games, transporta-tion, and money. Students examined various forms of In-dian currency, a game, examples of an auto-rickshaw and areplica of one of the many colorful trucks that are a majorcontributor to the distribution of goods throughout India.At this station, students played the popular Indian gamePachisi (Parcheesi). They also calculated the value of theIndian currency based on the current exchange rate infor-mation provided and recorded these calculations in theirminibooklet. Finally, they wrote a postcard to a friend de-scribing the similarities and differences between the differ-ent modes of transportation presented at this station.

After visiting each station, students returned to the class-room where they met in their small groups to debrief theirexperiences. As part of this debriefing discussion we asked

students to consider the museum curators’ (our) purpose indesigning these exhibits and the specific hands-on activitiesat each installation. The overwhelming consensus was thatthe curators of this exhibit wanted visitors to think aboutthe ways in which their own lives are similar to and dif-ferent from those of people who live in India. “It was notdesigned to say look at all this stuff that is wrong or all thisstuff that is better,” explained one student, “but to get usto make connections to our own lives.”

Janus Figure

To conclude these first activities, students created Janusfigures that represented how their perceptions and knowl-edge of India had changed on the basis of the read aloudand the museum exhibit visit. In this Janus figure, studentslisted their initial understandings of India on one side andtheir newfound knowledge and information gained fromvisiting the museum on the other side. The Janus figureactivity provided an opportunity for preservice teachers toreflect on what they had learned about India, to recognizethe flaws in some of their initial assumptions about In-dia, and to create an alternative text and representation ofthis new understanding. Several preservice teachers’ Janusfigures included poignant comments that revealed a newawareness of the limitations of their prior understandingof the people and culture of India. One student noted, “Iam shocked at how similar life in our two countries re-ally is—we aren’t that different and my students need toknow this.” Another student revealed, “You know Indiareally isn’t as bad as they make it look on movies and TV.”It was through this multidimensional hands-on approachwith the various learning stations that our preservice teach-ers began to understand and question their own biases andassumptions as well as develop intercultural sensitivities(Scott 1999).

Connecting the Unifying Motifs

The first activities in our interdisciplinary mini-unit (de-scribed above) were built on two of the four “unifyingmotifs” recommended by the National Council for theSocial Studies for social studies instruction at the mid-dle school level. “Concern for self” and “concern for theworld” were integrated into the Think/Write-Pair-Share,the read aloud, and the museum exhibit. Through eachlearning activity students were provided with opportuni-ties to not only learn about India (concern for the world)but also themselves by making comparisons and reflect-ing on their own experiences (concern for self). This firstset of learning activities also incorporated the pedagogi-cal recommendations of the Task Force on Social Studiesin the Middle School. The Think/Write-Pair-Share, theread aloud, and museum visit each provided students with

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opportunities to work collaboratively as well as to prac-tice important literacy skills while learning social studiescontent. The museum visit also provided an experientiallearning opportunity because students were able to holdand examine cultural artifacts as well as listen to mu-sic, sample different food items, smell spices, and play agame. Finally, these initial learning activities integrated anumber of Merry Merryfield’s recommendations for teach-ing about the complexity of culture. More specifically, theThink/Write-Pair-Share, read aloud, and museum exhibitseach provided preservice teachers with opportunities tolearn about cultural universals as well as their own cultureand unique aspects of Indian culture. Similarly, the readaloud and museum exhibit provided students with accessto a wide variety of texts as well as visuals, artifacts, audio,and video materials to gather information that helped themreconsider their initial assumptions and perceptions of In-dia. Across all these initial activities preservice teachersengaged in critical literacy practices as they discussed andanalyzed the purpose of different types of “texts” (movies,children’s literature, and museum exhibit).

While these first activities incorporated many of NCSS’recommendations, they were limited in that the primary fo-cus was only on “surface” culture. The Think/Write-Pair-Share, the read aloud, and the museum exhibit each fo-cused on the visible and tangible aspects of culture—food,clothing, and art, for example. The purpose of these ac-tivities was to help preservice teachers begin to recognizethe rich diversity and complexity of India and to challengetheir preexisting assumptions. While these surface aspectsof culture are significant, without also exploring “inter-nal” culture—the intangible values, beliefs, assumptions,and norms that inform how people act, speak, think, andinteract with others—our understanding of culture is lim-ited and in many ways superficial (Beal and Bates 2010;Merryfeld and Wilson 2005).

Moving Beyond Surface Culture

To move beyond surface culture and begin to consider howpeople of different cultural backgrounds make sense of theworld, social studies educators need to provide studentswith access to diverse perspectives and focus their investi-gation on specific issues. In our interdisciplinary unit wechoose to focus on education.

Exploring Internal Culture through Education

Education became the focus of the unit for multiple rea-sons. First, school structure and curriculum are a reflectionof a wide range of values and beliefs about power andknowledge. By learning about the educational system ofanother country or culture, students can move beyond sur-face culture and begin to explore internal culture. India

also has a complex and diverse educational system, includ-ing government-run schools, private schools, and a wideranging assortment of small rural schools, which wouldmake it difficult for our students to overgeneralize aboutthe values and belief systems of the people of India. Second,Christine had recently traveled to India through an IREXgrant to work with educators there on incorporating lit-eracy across the curriculum by exploring various methodsand responses that encouraged student engagement. Herfirsthand experiences of Indian schools provided an invalu-able resource as well as a way to engage preservice teachersin discussion about the variability of access to and qualityof education in India, the United States and around theworld. Finally, as future teachers, our students are inter-ested in a wide range of educational issues, including howschool experiences in other countries differ from our ownand the ways in which practicing teachers address issuessuch as student motivation and engagement.

The preservice teachers acknowledged that many of theirassumptions and beliefs about India had been influenced,but they weren’t sure how this knowledge could impactlearning in their future classroom. A student commented,“I know that my students need to understand how similarwe all are in the world, but how can I get them to lookbeyond things like food, clothing and artifacts that we of-ten initially focus on?” We engaged preservice teachers in adiscussion about the challenges of moving beyond surfaceculture and explained that one way to explore the beliefsand values of another culture is to examine social institu-tions such as school systems. To learn more about India,we then looked closely at Indian teachers’ and students’school experiences as one way to explore internal culture(Beal and Bates 2010; Merryfeld and Wilson 2005).

Christine shared a photo slide show that presented thefirsthand account of her experiences with the educationalsystem and culture of India while working with teach-ers in Southern India in the Karnataka region. Preserviceteachers were able to see pictures taken during her jour-ney about the roads and transportation systems, famousshrines and temples, typical schools and classrooms thatshe had worked with, as well as the types of homes andanimals commonly found in this region of India. Duringthe slide show, students were provided opportunities to askquestions about topics to gain further information or un-derstanding. It was during this slide show and discussionthat preservice teachers learned more about the many simi-larities that exist between the work of teachers in the UnitedStates and India.

During the slide show Christine explained that the teach-ers she worked with in India were concerned with providingtheir students with a high-quality education that would pre-pare their students for the challenges of the global economy.Like teachers in the United States, the teachers Christineworked with wanted to pique student interest and engage-ment and were interested in learning methods and strategiesthat would encourage these traits within the classroom.

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Preservice teachers found it interesting that teachers inIndia struggled with some of the same issues they strug-gled with when teaching their students. When discussingthe schools she visited, Christine pointed out to preserviceteachers that these schools were private, nongovernmentalschools and that there are many different types of schoolsand school systems in India. Our students were also amazedto learn about the facilities and resources available at theschools Christine visited. One school site included three li-braries with over 50,000 books, three computer centers with160 computers and access to the Internet, audiovisual hallswith LCD projectors, and science and math laboratorieswith a new science park for hands-on discoveries arrivingsoon. One preservice teacher noted, “Wait a minute—theyhave more technology than the school that I am currentlyplaced at. This is amazing and shocking to me as a teacher.I had no idea India had resources like this.” Asked to con-sider Christine’s purpose for the slide show, the preserviceteachers were quick to point out that “She wanted us tosee that they are ahead of us in some ways.” More specif-ically, preservice teachers were quick to point out that theprimary purpose of the slide show was to challenge preex-isting conceptions of India as “backward.”

Following the photo slide show and discussion, studentsviewed and discussed various segments from the video Go-ing to School in India (2007). This film is a companion to thepopular book Going to School in India by Lisa Heydlauffand was a project of SHAKTI for Children, a program ofthe Global Fund for Children. SHAKTI for Children isdedicated to ‘teaching children to value diversity and togrow into productive, caring citizens of the world” (Heyd-lauff 2005, xi). The overarching purpose of the film is tohighlight the great diversity of nongovernmental educa-tional institutions and programs in India and increase sup-port for schools throughout the country. Each segment isnarrated by a student and provides both an introduction toa specific region of India, its climate and economy as well asa “typical” school day as experienced by the student narra-tor. The film provides opportunities for preservice teachersto learn what it means to go to school on a lake, on a bus,in a mud desert, on a boat, in a monastery, on a moun-taintop, in the dark, on wheels, and in a tribe (Heydlauff2005; 2007). In viewing and discussing the film, our stu-dents considered the geographical, linguistic, and culturaldiversity of India as well as different Indians’ values andbeliefs about education, gender roles, and curriculum.

Similarities in Education

While each segment was viewed, preservice teachers wereasked to record information about the curriculum taughtin each school, the instructional methods used, how theschool day was structured, as well as who attended andtaught at each school. After all the segments were viewed,

working with a partner, students reviewed this information,looking for patterns as well as similarities and differencesamong the different Indian schools. Through this viewing,note-taking, and discussion process it became clear to pre-service teachers that educational opportunities for manychildren in India were defined by local culture and placeas well as the values and needs of these specific commu-nities. They also recognized that there was not one singleagreed-upon educational system in India and that thereare huge resource disparities between schools as well asa wide range of school structures throughout the nation.Some schools in India are coeducational; others are not;some use a discipline-based curriculum similar to the oneimplemented in the United States; others focus on the localenvironment and ecology as a way to prepare children foradulthood in their community. By looking closely at thecurriculum and student population of different schools inIndia, our students began to wrestle with the ways in whichculture is never monolithic or simple. Not only did they an-alyze differences between schools in India as a way to learnabout different values and beliefs that inform Indian cul-ture but also considered how these values and beliefs differfrom their own and more broadly American culture. Again,preservice teachers also carefully analyzed the intent andpurpose of film as a way to make sense of the informationpresented about education in India. “She wants us to seehow hard some kids have to work to get to school andhow much they want to go,” one student explained duringthe discussion. Another student noted that the film was in-tended to “make us feel guilty and want to help. She didn’tinclude any of the modern schools like Christine visited.”To conclude this investigation of education in India, stu-dents worked in pairs to create a dialogue poem that high-lighted differences between students’ school experiences inIndia and the United States. Through this dialogue poem,the preservice teachers were assessed on their understand-ings of the different perspectives of who has access to theeducation system in the United States and India. They wereasked to take on the distinct perspectives between the twocultures and to highlight similarities as well as differencesbetween these two educational systems.

One final small group discussion was facilitated to con-clude the miniunit. In this small group discussion, preser-vice teachers were asked to reflect not only on what theyhad learned about India but also why it is important toconsider an author’s intent or purpose for a particular text.Each small group created a matrix that summarized whatthey had learned and from which source they learned thisinformation. Group members then evaluated each source,considering the author’s purpose, and then shared theirfindings with the whole class. During the whole class dis-cussion, we asked our preservice teachers to “rate” the re-sources and select one that they would use in their class-room with their students to teach about India. A heateddiscussion ensued, with one student exclaiming, “That is

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ridiculous! You can’t just use one. They all have a differentperspective.” Almost all of our students agreed, concludingthat culture is “just too complex” to understand from oneperspective or resource.

Conclusion

Although understanding can be gained through readingmaterials and taking courses at the university level, wefelt that providing our students’ opportunities to actu-ally experience the various aspects of a culture and howthis could be translated into their own classrooms wasan essential practice to model for our preservice teachers.Kagan (1992) and Richardson (2001) suggest that forchange to happen, preservice teachers must be willing toexamine their assumptions and beliefs about their teachingphilosophy and to take risks and apply new ideas into theirpractice.

Our exploration of education in India built upon a num-ber of the NCSS recommendations. In this case, the slideshow, video, ensuing discussions, and poetry writing builtupon “concern for the world,” one of the unifying motifsfor social studies curriculum at the middle school level. Byengaging students in dialogue about who has access to ed-ucation and the quality of these educational experiences,these activities also incorporated “concern for others” and“concern for right and wrong,” two of the other unifyingmotifs recommended by NCSS. Among Merry Merryfield’srecommendations for teaching about world cultures is theimportance of purposefully connecting content to students’particular interests and experiences. Working with preser-vice teachers, we were able to build this connection throughan investigation of education in India and teachers’ and stu-dents’ experiences in a wide variety of schools. The com-bination of Christine’s slide show and the film providedpreservice teachers with multiple perspectives—another ofMerryfield’s recommendations—to learn about educationin India. As with the introductory activities focused on sur-face culture, these learning activities also provided studentswith opportunities to work with their peers, learn socialstudies content, and practice listening, speaking, and writ-ing skills. Finally, preservice teachers once again wrestledwith author’s/director’s purpose to evaluate the informa-tion shared during the slide show and the film.

Throughout our interdisciplinary mini-unit, preserviceteachers were provided opportunities to engage with a widevariety of texts, including traditional print materials as wellas visuals and film, as a way to learn about another cul-ture. We do admit that an invaluable learning tool missingfrom the unit was the opportunity for students to haveface-to-face and/or virtual interactions with people fromIndia. As Merry Merryfield and other global educatorsargue, these types of cross-cultural experiential learningexperiences are one of the most powerful ways to helpstudents move beyond stereotypes and appreciate other

people’s perspectives. Still, by working together we designedactivities that wove together social studies content and criti-cal literacy skills. This combination is essential when teach-ing about world cultures.

It is essential to provide opportunities for preserviceteachers to directly experience methods, such as the culturaltrunk artifacts, that work in conjunction with their currentmulticultural understandings. We often “send teachers intothe classroom naked, in terms of ammunition to meet theneeds of the students” (Darling-Hammond as quoted inGardner 2006). Many researchers emphasize the usefulnessof relating university coursework to actual classroom teach-ing methods (Goodlad 1991; Meade 1991; Sumpter 1995).Future teachers need to know how students learn and de-velop, and they must understand their subject matter andthe purposes of curriculum. In addition, they should knowand understand how to teach multicultural understandingso it can be understood by diverse learners (Gardner 2006).

We need to make multicultural understanding visible bymaking it a valued part of our curriculum (Nieto 1996). Nu-merous state standards currently call for enhanced readingin all curriculum areas through the building of good habitsof reading, researching, and learning. Collaboration acrossthe disciplines and use of teaching methods that stretchacross the content area disciplines provide an opportunityfor preservice teachers to explore methods of teaching thatpartner with other subject areas. By exposing these pre-service teachers to methods and strategies that encouragediscussion and further understanding of new cultures andresponse across numerous curriculum areas, we are encour-aging our future teachers in implementing these types oflearning strategies within their future classrooms. With therealities of standards-based accountability, it is imperativeto model and demonstrate for students how subject areasand teaching methods transcend across traditional bound-aries. Hopefully, we have also provided you with a frame-work for incorporating interdisciplinary understanding ofworld cultures through the use of cultural trunk artifacts,photo slide shows, and multimedia resources. The develop-ment of cultural competency not only provides preserviceteachers with the knowledge of diverse populations; thisexperience also enables them to have an increased ability toaffirm the cultures of others. It is through incorporating ex-periences like this that our preservice teachers can becomemore aware of the essence of living within a culturally di-verse society and will encourage this type of understandingin the future generations to come.

Resources

Minibooklet Resourcehttp://library.thinkquest.org/J001156/makingbooks/

minibook/index.htmSouth Asia Institute Cultural Trunks Resource

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http://www.utexas.edu/cola/insts/southasia/outreach/k-12/culture-trunks.php

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