Intellectual Merit: It has been theorized that the possible cause for the persistent underachievement of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) schoolchildren relative to white and even other minority groups derives from the different and conflicting cultural milieus of the AI/AN home and the schools AI/AN children attend. As a result, there has been a turn in recent years toward cultural based education relative to this vulnerable population. Viewed in some circles as a remedy to the decades-long practice of forced assimilation and integration, the implications of cultural based education for AI/AN student achievement have nevertheless remained unclear due to a historical lack of good data that can be said to be representative of all AI/AN children. With the issuance of Executive Order No. 13336 in 2004, however--which called for identifying those cultural and linguistic practices shown to improve the academic performance of AI/AN children, and which led to the instituting of the National Indian Education Study (NIES) in 2005--an opportunity finally exists to fill the gap in the literature. Utilizing NIES data, the fellow's research exposes whether and in what context the indigenous culture orientation of AI/AN families plays a role, positive or negative, in their children's academic development. As a first step, the fellow highlights, by institutional control (i.e., whether the school is administered by the U. S. Department of Education [DOE] or by the Bureau of Indian Education[BIE]), the extent to which AI/AN culture figures in teachers' transmission of reading and mathematics knowledge during kindergarten through 12th grade. Given BIE schools' control by AI/AN community leaders, as well as their residence on, or close proximity to, tribal lands, the fellow hypothesizes a greater degree of cultural reinforcement in these schools relative to DOE schools, which are often run by non-AI/AN people and located away from tribal lands. As a second step, the fellow's research answers, at the student level, the following questions: (1) To what degree does the incorporation of tribal practices, beliefs, languages, or ways of viewing the world into classroom work enhance or detract from reading and mathematics achievement associated with indigenous cultural knowledge received at home?; and (2) Do the effects of AI/AN culture based practices at school vary by institutional control (i.e., are they the same across schools operated by DOE and those operated by BIE?)?
Broader Impacts: The elucidation of the ways in which the differing cultures of the home and school might influence academic outcomes will provide professionals concerned about the academic trajectories of AI/AN communities with information to enhance classroom practices and bring about greater racial parity in outcomes. The multiple articles to be written and circulated at professional meetings and published in peer-reviewed journals will be among the first scholarship generalizable to the entire universe of AI/AN children throughout the United States. This scholarship will be of enormous benefit not only to intellectuals and professionals interested specifically in AI/AN educational outcomes, but also, and most especially, to those whose primary work is within predominantly AI/AN areas or elementary and secondary schools. Further, a finding of positive effects of cultural congruence between the home and school should allow for the identification of best practices for future policy implementation to close the AI/AN achievement gap. Improving approaches to educating indigenous peoples at the elementary and secondary levels will improve the chance of their greater participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (S.T.E.M.) and social, behavioral, and economic science (S.B.E.s) fields at the postsecondary and postgraduate levels.
Another way in which the fellow's project impacts the broader community is its prospective involvement of AI/AN and other minority students in aspects of the research, to be effectuated through the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (L.S.A.M.P.) and the Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (A.G.E.P.) at the host institution.
The specific objectives of this study were to answer, using data from the National Indian Education Study (NIES), a subset of the larger National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the following research questions: Research Question #1: Is there a statistically significant difference in either the degree of incorporation of culture-based education practices or the extent of cultural rootedness at home between Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) and U.S. Department of Education (DOE) controlled schools? Research Question #2: Does the incorporation of tribal practices, beliefs, languages, or ways of viewing the world into classroom work, in concert with the indigenous cultural knowledge received at home, and the congruence between the two, enhance the mean reading and mathematics achievement of American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) children, net of the effects of attendance at a BIE- or DOE-controlled school and other controls? Research Question #3: Does the association of cultural congruence between school and home to school mean achievement, if present, vary by institutional control, i.e., are they the same across schools operated by the DOE and the BIE or tribes? Answering RQ1. Regarding whether there were statistically significant differences in culture-based education between the two school sectors, the answer is a yes with respect to both the fourth and eighth grade reading and math data. Relative to DOE-controlled schools, BIE-controlled schools incorporate to a greater extent culturally relevant material into classroom education and school life. There were also differences in the cultural rootedness of the home between the DOE and BIE sectors in each of the four datasets, though the differences were greater than double among the eighth grade reading and math assessments relative to the fourth grade reading and math assessments. Answering RQ2. There is a small positive effect of cultural congruence on AI/AN students’ fourth grade reading performance. Despite this advantage, however, it may not be enough to counter the negative effect of culture-based education on the mean fourth grade NAEP reading score. There was no evidence that culture-based education, cultural rootedness at home, and the congruence between the two improved AI/AN performance on the fourth grade math or eighth grade reading or math assessments. Answering RQ3. The average effect of culture-based education on school mean achievement was slightly more negative, though statistically nonsignificant, among DOE-controlled schools than among BIE-controlled schools for fourth and eighth grade math and reading assessments. Cultural congruence between the home and school had a slightly more positive, if statistically nonsignificant, effect on students’ mean performance when those students attended DOE- rather than BIE-controlled schools. This was only true for the fourth grade reading and math and the eighth grade math assessments. Unlike the findings from the other datasets analyzed here, the effect of culture-based education on the differentiating impact of culture rootedness at home on the school mean eighth grade math assessment was greatest in BIE- rather than DOE-controlled schools. Again, however, this relationship was statistically nonsignificant.
