 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
 |
|||||||
Resources
Tutorial: Sample Study
Step 3 - Cultural Questions
Examining a Sample Study
In this sample study, a 9-year-old African-American girl in a special education program was experiencing difficulties in socializing with peers. The author had the following puzzlement:
| Why is this little girl, who appears to have so much to offer other children, having difficulty forming and maintaining friendships with her peers? |
Based on this puzzlement, the author began to examine and gather information about this student and her social interactions at school and at home. She also looked at relevant resources to guide her thinking process and choose an appropriate cultural question (Step 3).
|
Due to her interactions with her peers, Jase did not have many friends. She would often turn to adults for the companionship she was seeking therefore, her social skills were not improving. I thought there might be some cultural issues affecting Jase’s relationships with her peers. I used the Cultural Inquiry Process web site (Jacob, 1999) to formulate some questions about my puzzlement. For example, how does the tracking system of the special education program at Field affect Jase’s relationships with her peers in and outside of the special education class? How could my beliefs about how students should interact be affecting my observations of Jase and the other students? Was my cultural background causing me to "socialize [her] to silence and invisibility" as Fordham (1993, p. 23) believes happens to many African American girls? Could there be a mismatch between Jase’s family culture and the culture of the classroom? After gathering more information through my meeting with Jase’s mom, I chose to focus on the mismatch between Jase’s home and family culture and the culture of the school and to look specifically at the difference in Jase’s interactional style at home and the expectations at school. |
Notice how the author used the Cultural Inquiry Process website as a resource for exploring possible cultural questions. She also looked at an outside resource by Fordham to consider cultural issues that relate specifically to African-American girls. To hear different perspectives on how this author used these resources to choose a cultural question, click on these links:
Use the following questions to think about how this author located, read, and integrated these resources to support her choice of a cultural question for her puzzlement. Check your answers by clicking on the links below each section.
Locating Resources
1) What strategies did this author use to locate resources for this step?
2) What other ways could she have located resources?
3) What key words or search terms could she have used?
Reading the Resources
4) What were the purposes she had for reading these resources?
Integrating Resources
5) How did the author use these resources to support her study?
Continue on to: Sample Study Step 4: Gathering Information
