Vol. 1, No.3
1993
Professional
Tips for Adult and
Continuing Educators
TIPS ON TEACHING AFRICAN-AMERICAN ADULTS
by
Margaret Shaw, Ed. D. Pennsylvania State
University
These tips focus on
teaching African-American adults from a cultural perspective. This teaching
approach includes all the basic objectives of adult education but with a
slightly different emphasis so that learning activities will have increased
meaning for African-American adults. Teaching from a cultural perspective pays
attention to the subject matter as for any adult student; however, the subject
matter is contextualized to have meaning for the African-American adult.
Teaching from a cultural perspective also pays attention to the developed
knowledge structures, perceptual patterns, and the preferred processes of
learning within that culture. It also pays attention to teachers and their
cultural perceptual patterns as well as their effects on the teaching/learning
process. Following are some tips for students, curriculum specialists, and
teachers that may lead to better services for African-American adults.
Tip #1. Teachers should encourage students to interpret their own world through the students' two ways of knowing: Afrocentric and Eurocentric.
African-Americans
grow up in a distinct culture that shapes their cognitive development and
impacts the way they behave in an academic setting. African-Americans have two
ways of knowing: an African-American and a European-American way within a
largely Eurocentric culture. From their home cultural context, many
African-Americans are taught an Afrocentric way of thinking and living: thus
the development of the Afrocentric eye. From the larger societal perspective,
they are taught the Eurocentric perspective and develop ways of knowing from
the Eurocentric eye. African-Americans have learned both within and outside
their own culture everyday negotiating strategies to regulate their movement
and grasp meaning between the cultures. These strategies are called LENS (learning everyday negotiating strategies). They look through their LENS with two eyes at every
situation. This two-ness is well documented in the literature. LENS serves as
the perceptual filter through which their world is viewed and structured. The
dualism provides a keen awareness that permits them to examine, evaluate, and
interpret situations critically and quickly. The constant shifting between
cultures creates a shrewd sense of skill and precision in perceiving the two
worlds in depth, both singly and jointly. Many times it becomes critical that
African-Americans hold and utilize the two worldviews simultaneously.
LENS focuses on the
two worlds that African-Americans see--the world which acknowledges their
presence and possibilities, and the other world which views African-Americans
as maladjusted facsimiles of the European-American culture. African-Americans
focus on ethnocentric orientations that increase their vision and society's
orientations that limit their vision. To the degree that one lives in an
overtly racist and oppressive system, one will have developed LENS.
The Eurocentric
environment of schools forces the development of a Eurocentric eye as well as
an Afrocentric eye. This dualistic experience influences the development of a
unique pattern of learning characterized as "learning-to-learn-to-live."
This pattern creates a critical perspective that is not merely an intellectual
process. It is about a process of coming to believe in the possibility of a
variety of experiences, a variety of ways of understanding the world, a variety
of frameworks of operation without imposing, consciously or unconsciously, a
notion of norm.
How does this
process look in action? First, the teacher disempowers oneself and therefore
gives students the opportunity to empower themselves by becoming the authority
in their own voice. It shows students that there are multiple frameworks for
learning in the classroom.
Tip #2. Teachers
must have methods and approaches that allow African-American adults to examine
and question not only the instructor but the textbook or the "official
knowledge" for validity and utility.
Official knowledge
is what is written in textbooks, and it may be different from what students
have been taught. Many African-Americans are suspicious of official knowledge
when the educational encounter is between the dominant educational system and
those whose history, traditions, and assumptions have been ignored and often
denigrated. If people don't feel empowered they must, as students, feel as
though they are in control of their learning. Respect for what they can
contribute as well as what they wish to learn is essential to their education.
It is an opportunity to take part in knowledge production generated out of
their own culture. For example, one group of students might question the
content validity of a history textbook. In response to this, they could write
their own history books.
Tip #3.
Teachers must recognize that African-American adult learners are capable of
complex learning in the classroom and should design learning activities that
evoke and challenge these abilities.
Researchers argue
that complex thinking can be observed in the streets among students who drop
out, but seldom has this complex thinking been captured in the classroom. In
order to use this process in the classroom, teachers must first understand how
such complex thinking and learning operates. Secondly, teachers must begin
helping students use their everyday critical thinking and learning strategies
within the classroom environment. For example, drop-outs on the street learn
rap songs quickly. Why? They understand the rhythm and beat because it is
important to them. Teachers can build a classroom activity around rap music by
asking students to develop their own music within the context of the planned
lessons.
Tip #4.
Teachers should emphasize practical application.
Teachers who
experience the most success are those who illustrate new concepts or broad
generalizations by using life experiences drawn from the learners. In addition,
the transfer of learning and the ability to maintain that learning suggests
that learners plan and rehearse application of concepts within their daily contexts.
For example, for many urban African-Americans, illustrations related to using a
currency exchange may be more appropriate than illustrations using banking and
checkbook operations.
Tip #5.
Teachers should use experiential learning methods.
Many
African-American teachers have found that experiential learning strategies
provide greater success than other methods. Strategies that tap the
experiences of the adult learners include group discussion, the case method,
the critical-incident process, simulation exercises, role playing,
skill-practice exercises, field projects, action projects, laboratory methods,
demonstration seminars, work conferences, counseling, and community
development.
Tip #6. Teachers
should look at their own culture and understand how their perceptual patterns
operate within the classroom and their impact on the teaching and learning process.
In viewing
African-American students through an outside culture lens, European-American
teachers may have a distorted image of their students, even though it may be masked
by the cloak of professionalism or be unintentional.
We must take into consideration
the teacher's attitudes, beliefs, expectations and values about the academic strengths
of African-American adult students. Teachers need help in looking at how their
beliefs, values and behavioral styles affect their students. Training programs
that take teachers beyond superficial intellectual discussions about cultural
differences, racial relationships and Black history are necessary. Teachers
should participate in both formal and informal learning experiences that are
focused on racism and other social issues. Formal learning experiences consist
of structured events such as workshops, presentations, oral histories, and
other explications of traditions through storytelling, sensitivity groups, and
focused group sessions. Teachers need to take a deeper look at themselves as
persons, how they communicate, how they judge and value others, how students
perceive them, and most importantly, how these human characteristics affect the
development of the students' learning. By looking at one's own biases, teachers
can build more constructive relationships with African-American students.
Resources for
Additional Information
Ausubel, D. P. (1963).
The psychology of meaningful verbal learning. New York: Grune & Stratton.
Colin, S. A. J.,
III, & Preciphs, T. K. (1991). Perceptual patterns and the learning
environment: Confronting white racism. In R. Hiemstra (Ed.). Creating
environments for effective adult learning (pp. 61-70). New Directions for Adult
and Continuing Education, No. 50. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.
Gurba, C. &
Briscoe, D. B. (1989). Capitalizing on culture. Tampa. FL; The University of
South Florida Center for Community Education.
Knowles, M. S.
(1980). The modern practice of adult education (2nd edition). New York:
Cambridge.
Shaw, M. A. (1992).
African-American strategies of successful adaptation in response to diseducation: A phenomenological
investigation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Northern Illinois University,
DeKalb. Illinois,
Margaret Shaw is an
area representative with the Office of Continuing Education at Pennsylvania
State University in Harrisburg. Her responsibilities include teaching and coordinating
non-credit programming.
Professional Tips
for Adult and Continuing Educators is published by the American Association
for Adult and Continuing Education. Permission is granted to reproduce the
contents of Tips.