4.2 Gather information about school culture.

See the CIP Step 4 page for general suggestions about collecting and analyzing information about your puzzlement. If you think that school culture(s) might be influencing your puzzlement, a challenge in gathering information about school cultures is that they often are difficult to "see" because they are taken for granted (i.e., considered natural or normal) by those who participate in them. As a result, you may need to "make the familiar strange." If you have lived abroad for an extended time and then returned to the U.S., you most likely had a strong experience that made the familiar seem strange.

A comparative perspective can help. Touring your school or reviewing school artifacts (mission statements, flyers, calendars, etc.) with someone from another culture is one way to help you make the familiar strange.

In a similar way, immersing oneself in other school cultures vicariously through books or videos can help you see with "new" eyes. Preschool in Three Cultures, both the book (Tobin, Wu, & Davidson, 1989a) and the video (Tobin, Wu, & Davidson, 1989b), and the book Amish children: Education in the family, school, and community (Hostetler & Huntington, 1992) presented very different classroom and school cultures. Carefully reading or viewing these resources with the goal of really trying to enter into these alternative cultures can help you bring new perspectives to the classroom and school cultures in which you participate.

Detailed data collection and analysis (for example, paying careful attention to how language is used or collecting information using audiotapes) can also help because it takes the attention to a level "below" the normal. Cazden (2001) presented a useful overview of language related to teaching and learning. Detailed analysis of language use can help make tacit culture more visible to the teacher researcher.

Specific suggestions related to substeps of Step 4.2 include:

• 4.2.1 Competition
• 4.2.2 Tracking or ability-grouping
• 4.2.3 Instructional programs for English language learners

Success Stories & CIP Studies Related to School Culture

Reconsider question: 3.2 
Develop intervention: 5.2 
Guide for Reading Step 4 and Step 5 Pages