Cultural discontinuity between home and school and American Indian and Alaska Native children's achievement. Issue 4 (4th July 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Torres, D. Diego
• Is Part Of: Journal of educational research. Volume 110:Issue 4(2017)
• Page Start: 331
• Page End: 347
• Publication Date: 2017-07-04
• Subjects: American Indian and Alaska Native education -- culture-based education -- cultural discontinuity; Education -- Periodicals; 370.705
• DOI: 10.1080/00220671.2015.1103686
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0022-0671

Abstract

ABSTRACT: An assumption of culture-based education with respect to American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) children is that discontinuity between home and school cultures is responsible for educational underachievement. Using data from the 2009 round of the National Indian Education Study, a subset of the larger National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), the author constructed a measure of cultural discontinuity and examined its relationship to AI/AN students' Grade 4 and 8 reading and mathematics achievement. Contrary to the cultural discontinuity hypothesis, there is no statistically significant negative relationship when the culture of the home is discontinued at school. On the Grade 4 NAEP reading assessment, in particular, cultural discontinuity was positively associated with students' achievement, net of both student- and school-level controls. Findings suggest that the assumptions of culture-based education may be overstated, though longitudinal data are still needed to be able to make causal claims.