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In this assignment you are expected to examine your understanding of your cultural identity. According to your Banks text, cultural identity is “an individual’s subjective conception of self in relationship to a cultural a group” (p. 128). This assignments asks you to draw from your own experiences along with the theoretical perspectives on culture that are provided in (a) chapter 5 of Bilingual and ESL Classrooms and (b) chapters 4 & 7 of Cultural Diversity and Education. For this assignment, the following guiding definitions of culture are used: · “the values, traditions, social and political relationships, and worldview created, shared, and transformed by a group of people bound together by a common history, geographic location, language, social class, and/or religion”* · “a deep, multilayered, somewhat cohesive interplay of language, values, beliefs, and behaviors that pervades every aspect of a person’s life, and that is continually undergoing modifications” (Ovando et al., pp. 187-188). Questions/prompts that you need to incorporate into your paper: 1. Using the above definitions, describe your primary culture. Describe the shared and interrelated salient traits and processes of your primary culture (see, for example, both Ovando et al., pp. 190-192, and Banks, pp. 72-76, including Figure 4.2)? 2. How have you learned about your culture? What “rich mixture of culturally coded behavioral patterns have been learned through enculturation” (Ovando et al., p. 190) ? 3. Ovando, Collier, and Combs state that “we are all culture bearers…and culture makers” (pp. 192-193). How does that statement apply to your life experiences? 4. In what ways is your culture “unmarked” and “marked”? 5. Compare and contrast your “microculture” with the U.S. “national macroculture” (see Banks, p. 72). How have your micro/macrocultural experiences influenced how your perspective toward the importance of individuals becoming acculturated and assimilated into the U.S. “national macroculture”? 6. Respond to each “stage” of Banks’ “Stages of Cultural Identity” (pp. 134-139). Coherently integrate into your narrative these stages with a goal to make clear to the reader where you currently see yourself within each stage as based on your actual experiences, attitudes, and behaviors. 7. Now consider your cultural identity as a teacher in relation to Banks’ stages
as described in the section “Preliminary Curricular Implications
of the Stages |
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