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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 9, No. 8

Publication Date: August 25, 2022

DOI:10.14738/assrj.98.12927. Kudakwashe, K. L., Angela, J., & Michelle, S. (2022). Liberating Voices for Equity – Exploring Cultural Minority Students’ Experiences

in an Integrated Classroom. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(8). 352-370.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Liberating Voices for Equity – Exploring Cultural Minority

Students’ Experiences in an Integrated Classroom

Kapofu Lifeas Kudakwashe

Department of Education Australia

James Angela

University of KwaZulu-Natal

Department of Science, Technology and Mathematics Education

Stears Michelle

University of KwaZulu-Natal

Department of Science, Technology and Mathematics Education

ABSTRACT

This study foregrounds cultural minority learners’ voices in the exploration of

accomplishment of socio-cultural redress in basic education. The resonating global

call within the socio-cultural movement is for the inclusion of marginalised voices

and epistemes in curricula reformation and transformation overtures. Heeding the

latter, this study within the context of decolonisation, ethical professional practice

and equity sought to establish experiences of cultural minority learners’

experiences in an integrated South African school. Conceptually framed within

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) as strategy for pedagogical equity and

pursued through a naturalistic methodology scaffolded by observation and

interviewing the study elevates cultural minority learners’ voices about the

pedagogic setting. The study found that minority students regarded the

architecture of teaching and learning context as structured by their teachers as:

marginalising; alienating, disenchanting; emasculating; constraining, not attendant

to their intrinsic motivation needs nor their socio-political identities. Findings

revealed that though the legislated architecture for equity through cultural

inclusivity exists vestigial classroom practices not attuned to these aspirations for

equity still persist. Such findings highlighted the need for an escalation of deliberate

interventions to overturn these historically nuanced inhibitions to create equitable

pedagogic settings.

Keywords: Diversity, cultural minorities, Multicultural classrooms, Student culture,

Student experiences, Student voice

INTRODUCTION

Current curriculum reform is calling upon teachers to achieve a sense of cultural justice in their

classrooms. Contemporary curriculum reforms have as one of their foundational tenets the

respect for socio-cultural plurality. These curricula emphasise and acknowledge the role of

diverse interactions of all multi-cultural identities in the creation of hives of productive activity

in pedagogic settings. Scholarly work contends that foregrounding the sociocultural in

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Kudakwashe, K. L., Angela, J., & Michelle, S. (2022). Liberating Voices for Equity – Exploring Cultural Minority Students’ Experiences in an Integrated

Classroom. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(8). 352-370.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.98.12927

education, as well as the effect of the learner’s voices inclusion in teaching and learning has

premium for equity, social justice, successful learner achievement and affect outcomes (Castelli,

Ragazzi & Crescentini, 2012; Gay, 2018; Ismail, 2015). The call has been for education to

activate and capture learners’ voices in order to understand their mindsets and hearts as they

traverse schooling (Furman and Barton, 2006). Such calls are not solely premised on principles

of sound pedagogy, need for academic improvement or ethical professionalism for teachers but

an espousal of inalienable human rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights and progressive national

constitutions for the safeguarding and promotion of human dignity, freedom and equity.

Dignity, freedom and equity have as their foundational tenets the respect for socio-cultural

plurality and the achievement of a sense of racial-cultural justice. The latter sense in education

proffers platforms for learners to deploy their voice, give meaning to their own experiences

concomitantly becoming change agents dedicated to questioning, defining and transforming

the structured injustices that threaten their community. Thus, consideration of learner voice in

education reform makes schools critical democratic spaces, vehicles for social justice and public

responsibility.

Both progressive and critical visionaries of education continue to advocate for the solicitation

and consideration of learners’ voices for engagement and emancipation respectively (Zadja,

2010). The overarching conviction is such considerations being that equity cannot be

established without interrogating the epistemic diffusion and elements typifying scholastic

systems. Implicit in these considerations a call for the creation of platforms upon which

professional introspection with regards to teaching for diversity occurs. This study is premised

on this call and in a visceral sense serves as an impetus for professional development, in pursuit

of quality, minority-conscious pedagogical implementation as aspired for in curriculum reform

initiatives. This augurs well with the professionalism required of education practitioners which

is holistic and is holistically attendant to the needs of the student namely intellectual, emotional,

personal and cognitive. Thus, in this research as researchers we are of the view that a new

pedagogical normal goes beyond digitisation of curriculum but pursues the re-engineering and

reformatting of the totality of the educational socio-cultural fabric inclusive of learning spaces

in ways that embrace the idiosyncratic socio-cultural identities of those systemically

marginalised and excluded from education by reason of being cultural minorities.

Whilst exploring progress made in cultural integration in previously desegregated this study

sought to elevate cultural minority learners’ voice to glean their perspectives on aspired for

equity in a new democratic post-colonial dispensation. It was envisaged that gleanings from

this study would have the potential of informing on the progress of the inclusion projects and

progress towards equity in education in general.

STUDY ASSUMPTIONS

There are four assumptive propositions that undergird this work. Firstly, effective learning

does not and cannot stand outside the teaching and learning environment as it is always a part

of that environment. From this positioning we need to know that teachers as learning mediators

are responsible for structuring this environment through their reflexivity and agency (Melchin

& Picard 2008, 18).

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Our second proposition is best captured by (Thésée 2006, 25);

The colonial enterprise and natural sciences, mutually, have shaped and controlled the

deployment of one another... This is neither accidental nor coincidental. While the old colonial

power advanced unheeded, the neo-colonial power proceeds more cautiously, hidden under

polymorphic masks. The most powerful of these masks frames an epistemological figure which

implies knowledge.

The standard account of knowledge in this proposition is a Foucauldian coupling of knowledge

and power. In order for teachers to teach they must have the power to teach and this power

comes from knowledge. This knowledge is the knowledge of what constitutes equity pedagogy,

who students are and how science is experienced by these students.

Thirdly, the crisis in science education is not about the content but the context. It is about the

teaching and learning context. The science curriculum viewed within the global theory

(Turnbull, 2000) involves the acquisition of requisite science concepts that are held as

knowledge everywhere. According to the global theory such knowledge can be assembled in

myriad ways whilst contributing to the creation of a single, non-disparate and non- dichotomous knowledge space called science.

Emergent from the propositions above is the fourth proposition which is informed by the

conviction that any science can be taught to any child as long as the teaching and learning

context is structured appropriately. This is premised on the notion that an inherent curiosity

exists in all students and so is a desire for mastery and competence in domains of varying

degrees of freedom and mutual synergies.

RATIONALE OF STUDY

The second decade of this millennium has witnessed an emergent outcry for deconstruction

and reconstruction of learning spaces in a context of post-colonialism. This outcry has gained

traction in higher education with a disconcerting disquiet in basic education formations. The

latter prompted a question whether the disquiet was a result of the equity having been

accomplished in the basic education sector inclusive of primary, secondary and high schooling.

Was it proof that the teaching and learning context in basic education was free from knowledge

parochialism. These are the questions that prompted this investigation. It was the quest to

address these questions in an attempt to understand the experiences of cultural minorities in

pedagogic settings for redress. This study therefore heeded the call by (Lemke, 2001) that

students' experiences needed to be researched to work out the best ways to integrate science

and science curricula to better serve the needs of all the students amongst whom differences

exist. Thus, this study became a venture into epistemic social justice in both a testimonial sense

and hermeneutic sense (Fricker, 2007). This venture was also motivated by research findings

which point to the limited impact of interventions aimed at equity and their uneven success

(Ismail, 2015). Such findings have led scholars to call for the activation of critical voices to

promote an education that is dynamic whilst resonating with the aspirations for social justice

and equity (Ismail, 2015; Mitra, 2004).

LITERATURE REVIEW

Teaching is a triadic relation and a tri-polar process involving the source of teaching, the

student and a set of activities and their manipulation to bring about the achievement of

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Kudakwashe, K. L., Angela, J., & Michelle, S. (2022). Liberating Voices for Equity – Exploring Cultural Minority Students’ Experiences in an Integrated

Classroom. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(8). 352-370.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.98.12927

objectives by students as identified by the teacher (Bhowmik, Banerjee & Banerjee, 2013). Such

an understanding of teaching has historically led to a call for teachers to create climates which

are tolerant and purposefully promote harmonious interactions between themselves and

students, irrespective of biological and social-cultural endowments (Johnson, 2011). These

calls are based on the link established between student socio-cultural identity, teaching, and

learning (Lee, 2007). The ability to connect these three has been regarded as the panacea for

challenges in science education as the connection creates contexts that are relevant to and

reflective of student realities. Research indicates that when socio-cultural identity and related

experiences are linked to pedagogy they enhance student self-esteem and support healthy

identity formation (Gay, 2018). Despite this potency, the challenge for equity pedagogy is how

can minority students’ experiences everywhere be linked to pedagogy when they have not been

established or their existence confirmed? How can the science teachers integrate what they

don’t know? How can they attend to the realities of students whose reality as constituted by

their engagement with the pedagogic setting remain masked? We are reminded of the futility

of attempts to teach without this knowledge by Wu (1999, p. 535) who posits, “you can’t teach

what you don’t know”. How can the science teaching and learning context be relevantly

structured without knowledge of the experiences of the minority students and be expected to

serve them well?

Works that centre the socio-cultural in the development of viable teaching and learning

environments have described this context in a number of ways: culturally appropriate;

culturally congruent; mitigating cultural discontinuity; culturally responsive and culturally

compatible (Ladson-Billings 1995, Gay 2018) or culturally responsive pedagogy (Villegas &

Lucas, 2002). Such works are built on: the eradication of deficit-based ideologies of

marginalised students; disruption of the euro-centric, the emergence of a critical socio-political

awareness challenging and disrupting inequity and a recognition of the complexity of culture

and its potential in enhancing educational excellence (Howard & Terry 2011). The dominant

notion in this type of teaching is that students' experiences, ways of being and webs of meaning

are critical ingredients in structuring the teaching and learning context. The implicit argument

being that conducive classroom contexts can be nurtured by a deepened understanding of the

students’ ways of being.

Teachers who practice culturally responsive pedagogy build upon the varied lived experiences

of all students. They bring the curriculum to life through the provision of platforms for students

to prove their academic competence (Villegas & Lucas 2002). Such platforms establish and

nurture co-operative learning environments and high agentic expectations (Johnson, 2011). In

encouraging cultural competence these teachers reshape the prescribed curriculum and seize

every opportunity to help students be themselves. Such a pedagogic setting makes learning

culturally relevant and intrinsically motivates all students as they see themselves enacted

within the curriculum.

Schooling as a formal project is not a mere socio-political movement but in some cases been

deconstructive machinations poised at supplanting native webs of meaning and knowledge

systems. The possibility of a deconstructive agenda sets the trajectory for equity in education.

In this case education has to challenge colonial epistemes and interpretive systems through

rendering value to the cultural capital and freeing voices of all those in scholastic systems,

particularly those historically marginalised. Equity as used in this study is a multidimensional

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global concept which developed from the concept of equality, triggered by the question,

“Equality, yes but Equality of what?” and “Where does equality end and “fair” inequality (equity)

begin (Castelli et.al, 2012, p. 2245) for social justice? Whilst equality promotes equal treatment

for all despite variances in starting points, equity recognises and circumvents the inherent

reproductive capacity of equality which perpetuates initial inequality (Benadusi, 2006).

Through the deployment of various strategies equity strives to “make equal” groups with

different predispositions and endowments (Castelli et al. 2012, p 2245). Such strategies include

equity as: equal opportunity/access, equal treatment/pure meritocracy, equality between

social groups with advantage for the disadvantaged and equal opportunity for success

(Maitzegui-Onate & Santibanez-Gruber, 2008). According to Marginson (2011) whichever

strategy is deployed the spirit behind equity remains the advancement of human freedom and

optimisation of individuals’ chances pursuant of their full potential through maximising

learning opportunities, deployment of deliberate compensatory measures to guarantee success

for those whose sociocultural capital has limited currency in specific pedagogic settings.

Recognition of the centrality of the context in the conveyance of equity education has led to calls

for teachers to create teaching and learning contexts which are tolerant and purposefully

promote harmonious interactions irrespective of biological and cultural endowments (Johnson,

2011). Such overtures are deliberate reversals of Fricker’s (2007) concept of epistemic injustice.

Epistemic injustice is the suppression of the Other’s voice through the marginalisation, non- recognition and misrecognition of the knowledge of themselves and their webs of meaning

(LeBlanc & Kinsella, 2016). The absence of epistemic justice in education therefore translates

into what Medina (2012) refers to as testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial

injustice occurs when an actor is not recognised as a giver of knowledge owing to an identity

prejudice held by the regulator of a context. Hermeneutical injustice on the other hand occurs

when collectives are marginalised due to contextual prejudiced structural arrangements

(LeBlanc & Kinsella, 2016). However, it is important that both forms of epistemic injustice mute

the students’ voice, a situation which led Ladson-Billings (1995) to contend that it was

opportune to insert education into the socio-cultural rather than inserting the socio-cultural

into education.

The unmuting and activation of learners’ voices in curriculum design and implementation has

been advocated by extensive research in education (Mitra, 2004). Dating to Dewey’s 1899

transformed recitation the progressive argument has been that learners’ voices through

dialogical engagement have a place at the table of knowledge generation through inputting new

lines of thought and inquiry (Furman and Barton, 2006). Beyond empowerment and the

struggle for human rights learner voice now extends to the solicitation of learners’ voices in

shaping curriculum reform and the development of strategies for improvement of the scholastic

system (Fielding, 2011). In education the concept of voice has been described in two ways.

Voice is regarded as learners’ collective perspectives, expressed endowments and opinions

related to scholastic systems. Secondly, voice is conceptualised as teaching and learning

methodologies that are based on learners’ expressed choices, interests, passions, and ambitions

(Mitra). Voice as conceptualised by Mitra (2004, 651 - 688) has four attributes namely, voice as

individuated; as collectivised expression, voice as perspective and voice as participation. The

individuation of voice necessitates a solicitation of individuals’ views to inform the

development of meaningful, liberating, and engaging educational experiences (Nieto, 2015).

Recognising the crucial role of learners’ voice Soo Hoo (1993) cautions educational researchers

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Participants

When this study was conducted WHS had a total learner population of eight hundred and ten

learners and about forty teachers of whom only three were of non-white. White English- speaking learners were the cultural majority with over five hundred learners. Cultural

minorities made up a third of the learner population with most of them being of Asian descent

(about three quarters of the cultural minority population) and the remainder being of African

descent. For the purpose of this study we sought to capture the voice of cultural minorities from

knowledgeable participants. Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2018) posit that sufficient

understandings can be generated and valid interpretations made from knowledgeable

participants. Knowledgeable participants in this study were sampled using criterion-based

purposive sampling. Participants had to be from cultural minorities, had been at WHS for over

a year, doing grade eleven science they were supposed to be able to demonstrate an

understanding of the study, by being able to read and sign their consent forms. They were

expected to be able to communicate verbally in the language of teaching and learning at the

school, which was English.

Using the criteria above, information from students’ files and observations in science

classrooms ten students were selected and deemed adequate as posited by Maughan (2003).

These students were presumed representative enough and displayed socio-cultural

consciousness of the classes. Cognisant of the need for homogeneity we drew five students from

each of the two science classes whilst maintaining gender balance. One student was later

purposively chosen as a key participant. This individual (Top Dog) came across as the

spokesperson of the minority students during co-generative dialoguing and the minority

students seemed to venerate him (Cohen, Manion & Morrison 2018).

Data Collection

Data was collected in three phases. Phase one involved six monological observations in the two

science classrooms over the first school term. Each observation session lasted approximately

fifty-five minutes which was the duration of the science lessons. In this phase access to learner

file was granted and secondary data were collected from these files and incident reports

records kept at the administration office.

Phase two involved seven focus groups or co-generated dialogues with ten cultural minority

grade eleven students from the observed classes. The seven co-generated dialogues were held

over the second school term (April-June). A complete week from the 12th of May to the 16th of

May was devoted for dialogues one to five. The last two dialogues were held on the 20th of May.

All dialogues were video-recorded and transcribed verbatim into electronic word documents.

After conducting the dialogues with the ten students in the second school term an unstructured

interview with one of the students (Top Dog - pseudonym) whom we identified as an extreme

case during the dialogues was conducted. He happened to be saying more in the dialogues and

was highly regarded by other cultural minority students.

Data Analysis

Data analysis began with the importation of all electronic transcripts to QSR NVivo, a qualitative

data analysis software programme. All transcriptions at this point were filed in the system as

sources. This categorisation by sources made data handling easier without analytic

dissociation. Using NVivo data were typologically coded. This study sought to elevated cultural