Culture and Education: Impact on Student Learning

The Relationship Between Culture and Education

The relationship between culture and education is fundamental to ensuring that all students can learn in a fair and meaningful way. However, when teachers focus solely on complying with standard educational regulations, without taking into account the cultural and linguistic needs of students, there could be problems that affect both their learning and their integration into the classroom.

The Limitations of Standardized Education

On the one hand, general educational standards attempt to ensure that all students achieve the same goals, which seems positive, as it promotes equality and allows progress to be measured in a uniform way. However, this approach does not take into account that students come from diverse backgrounds and cultures. For example, a child of foreign origin newly arrived in a place like the Basque Country might face difficulties in learning, especially if he or she does not master the language. In this community, the public education system uses Model D, which is taught entirely in Basque. But factors such as this are not always taken into account in educational policies, as the text points out: ‘Instructional policies are dominated by monolingual instructional principles that are largely unsupported by empirical evidence and inconsistent with current understandings both of how people learn (Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000) and the functioning of the bilingual and multilingual mind’ (Bransford, Brown and Cocking, 2000).

Based on this, I agree with the opinion of Jim Cummins, who argues: ‘When we free ourselves from exclusive reliance on monolingual instructional approaches, a wide variety of opportunities arise for teaching languages by means of bilingual instructional strategies that acknowledge the reality of, and strongly promote, two-way cross-language transfer’. (Cummins, 2015). This implies that a bilingual approach could greatly benefit students who speak more than one language, enabling them to learn better and respecting their mother tongues.

Cultural Differences in Learning

In addition, education can be very different depending on the students' culture of origin. Some may have never been to school or may have been taught in different methods than those used in the local system. This can create additional barriers if teachers are not aware of these differences and do not adapt their teaching methods to take them into account.

The Importance of Cultural Representation

On the other hand, when students do not feel culturally represented in what they learn at school, they may feel that they are not valued or that they do not belong to the group. This can lead to a loss of interest in learning and reduced participation in school activities. Furthermore, if teachers do not adjust their pedagogical approaches to include cultural differences, they may be contributing to reinforcing an exclusionary education system that increases inequalities. For example, a teacher who focuses only on the official language, without recognizing the importance of some children's mother tongue, may make those students feel marginalized.

Strategies for Cultural Inclusion

One way to combat these inequalities is for teachers to receive specific training on different cultures, or at least on the cultures present in the school community. It is equally important for teachers to maintain a close relationship with families in order to learn more about students' situations and to be able to promote more effective inclusion. According to San Juana Rodríguez (n.d.), some useful strategies to improve cultural inclusion in the classroom include:

• ‘Interview the families about their language use or send home a questionnaire’
• ‘Encourage children to use their home languages in the classroom’
• ‘Invite family volunteers, school staff, or community members into your classroom’

Conclusion: Towards a More Inclusive Education

In short, ignoring the cultural and linguistic needs of students creates barriers to their education and contributes to increasing inequalities. While educational standards are important, they should not overlook the diversity of students. Schools and teachers need to be more flexible and find ways to include all students, for example, by teaching examples of diverse cultures in the classroom, allowing children to express their identity within the classroom, or by implementing vocabulary, customs, beliefs, etc. that address the different cultures of the students in the classroom, in the different dynamics that are organized in the classroom. In this way, all students will feel valued, motivated, and more willing to learn.