Author Archives: Myra Laldin

Accepting The Need to Belong

Last fall, we heard about highly charged situations arising across countless college campuses. ^{1 2 3} Some people reacted strongly by name-calling and spreading accusations of “bad parenting” or “lack of discipline” to explain these students’ actions.⁴ As a student of education and psychology, I asked myself:

What are these students really asking for? Why are they protesting?

Of course, I’m not the first person to examine these questions. Annie Murphy Paul, a psychology journalist, answered these questions in her recent article in Time Magazine.⁵ What these students really want, she concludes, is a “sense of belonging.”

Over the years, students have repeatedly asserted their desire to belong. Two years ago at Harvard, for example, students of color started the “I too am Harvard” movement to increase representation of marginalized communities on campus.⁶ Again, they are sending the same message: I am here, and I want to feel that I belong here too.

What does it mean to “belong?” And what impact might it have on students’ academic achievement and motivation? After spending four years of their lives on a campus, what factors help students to reach a level of ease and comfort, where they can feel as much at home as their peers? What factors prevent them from feeling comfortable?

Perhaps it’s easier to start with what doesn’t make students feel like they belong. It may be a lack of teachers from minority groups. It might also be a lack of representation of students’ minority group in the books they read and the movies they watch in class. It may be that there are few role models for them to follow. It may be the normalization of the majority culture in education while marginalized communities subject areas are referred to as “ethnic studies”. It may be the exclusion of minority students in student government or groups. The list goes on and on.

Students are speaking up because they seem to feel that they are stuck in the “out-group”, and politics aside, from a psychological perspective, I hope we can all agree that’s not how our campuses should be making any student feel.

The Science of Belonging

When we find ourselves in situations where we are the “out- group” or in an environment in which we feel like an outsider, we use our mental energy to monitor for threats, leaving fewer resources for higher cognitive processes. When students feel as if they don’t belong in a school setting, the cognitive energy that should be used on social engagement and learning is being used to scan for group barriers, discrimination and stereotypes.

As adults, we rarely acknowledge the importance of fun. Being part of a social group in school encourages us and motivates us to go to class. As Lev Vygotsky put it, we are “social learners.”⁷ School is a time when you are finding your sense of identity, and this is largely determined through who we hang out with. It is important that students’ conceptions of their identities allow them to believe that academic work holds value for them. If they believe that speakers of their language and members of their gender, racial, and ethnic groups do not have the ability to attain certain academic standards, they will act according to that belief. This belief can sometimes lead to what Claude Steele refers to as “stereotype threat.” Stereotype threat is feeling “at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype” about their race, gender, ethnicity etc.⁸

Claude Steele, a social psychologist, posits that when a group’s stereotypes are emphasized, their academic performance tends to deteriorate. In one experiment, when Black college students’ race was emphasized, they performed worse on standardized tests than their White counterparts. When race was not mentioned, they performed on par and sometimes better than the White students. These results, along with others focusing on stereotypes pertaining to other groups, such as his experiments on female mathematicians, showed the harmful effects of being aware that you are being viewed through the lens of a stereotype.⁸ Several factors seem to cause this decrease in academic performance triggered by stereotype threat: anxiety, physiological stress, and reduced capacity of our working memory.⁹

For a person facing a stereotype threat, the process of thinking through the possibility of confirming a stereotype by performing badly on a test causes a great deal of anxiety. In turn, this anxiety places a drain on a student’s energy and cognitive resources. As a result, the capacity of working memory is diminished, and performance is impaired.

Working memory is the ability we have to mentally manipulate information over short periods of time. Working memory can be thought of as your scratch pad, or your personal search engine, or as a mental workspace that we can use to store important information in the course of our mental activities. You can see how having an impaired working memory could affect your ability to mentally search through vast quantities of information. Even if you did manage to remember the necessary information, your mental workspace may still be in disarray.

Stereotype threat has physiological, as well as cognitive, effects. Social threat or disconnection seems to be processed in the brain in the same way as the threat of physical harm.¹⁰ When the threat is detected, a range of neurophysiological processes are set in motion. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) goes into overdrive, releasing a hormone called cortisol. Not surprisingly, cortisol is often called the stress hormone. High levels of cortisol seem to decrease neural connections the hippocampus, part of the brain associated with learning and memory and stress control. ¹⁰ Cortisol can negatively impact the prefrontal cortex, an area associated with high-order cognitive abilities.

For more details watch this short clip from TEDEd on How Stress Affects the Brain.

As educators, we need to make it a priority to create an environment where our students strive and can learn to their full potential.

Why Belonging Matters in the Classroom 

Research has also shown that academic outcomes, such as motivation, dropout rates and academic performance, were correlated with feelings of belonging.¹¹ A study demonstrated that college students’ self-reported of level of school belonging in high school positively corresponded with academic achievement in college.¹²

Walton and Cohen studied what happened when minority students and white students were made aware of the percentage of people in their chosen field of study who belonged to their ethnic or racial group. They compared how this knowledge affected minority and white students’ performance in their chosen field. An intervention that mitigated any doubts of belonging in a specific field had a positive effect on academic achievement. ¹³

This finding is consistent with Ladson-Billing’s research, which found that having role models to look up to, whether through literature or a teacher, has an impact on students and how they define what is attainable.¹⁴

In this country there is a very clear image of what success looks like. These ideals of success apply to all domains of life, not just the academic aspects. If we are in the majority culture, then it may appear that the system works well – but that’s not always the case for marginalized students.

Often, it is not only in school that minority students do not feel they belong – it is in every facet of society. The problems faced in schools is the effect of bias in society at large. However, the school is one place where we should be able to completely control whether students’ voices can be heard and their opinions can be of value. The classroom has the unique opportunity to provide equal support and equitable opportunities to all students.

Will our students end up feeling the same when they reach college? What are we doing in our classrooms, in our cafeterias, on our playgrounds, to ensure that our students, staff and leadership feel as if they belong. Are we being intentional about how we structure our classrooms to encourage a sense of belonging?

Like earlier research, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also found that students who had a greater sense of belonging were more inclined to have a higher level of engagement in class and tended to have high levels of academic performance. ¹⁵ The report posits that student engagement has “more to do with the culture of the school, and teachers and principals can play a strong role in creating a positive culture.”

Other studies underscore the importance of the role of teachers and administrators, who have the power to enforce policies and practices that promote social inclusion for the enhancement of students’ engagement and overall academic performance.¹⁶

Moving Forward with Intention

Research has shown that having academic material mirror student’s’ home life and culture helps them relate to the curriculum and take ownership in learning, improving academic achievement in a significant way. ¹⁷ Culturally Responsive Teaching(CRT) aims to address these challenges. It makes an effort to legitimize all cultures. It gives students the space to take ownership of their cultural heritage. It shows them the value of maintaining this heritage and to do so with pride. There is an effort to create an environment where there are no subtle or overt pressures for students to disavow their own culture and assimilate to the majority culture.

Policies, practices of inclusion and CRT are a start, but I think that even before implementing these solutions, the first step needs to be a self- awareness. For our students to be accepting of one another the attitude shift must start at the adult level. If we, as the leadership, staff, or teachers, do not display an attitude of inclusiveness and celebrate differences, how can we expect our students to act any differently?

Change must start with us, the role models that students follow. We must be introspective and honest with ourselves, recognizing our own biases and assumptions. Do we expect less from the Hispanic student than we do from others? Do we quickly punish our black students and take time to listen to others? Can we empathize with our students? Do we want to make an effort to change how to run things in our classrooms?

This article is not intended to provide easy answers. It is merely raising awareness about important issues that are affecting our students right now. When we’re ready, we can start looking for some practical answers.

Let’s not be one of the teachers and school leaders who tell are students that they are still welcome, even if they “don’t fit the mould” of our institution.¹⁸ Let’s break that mould. There should be no mould based on race, ethnicity or socio economic status. We all should be welcome with our own individualized moulds. For it is in diversity that we truly flourish.

Belonging is important. Our social interactions greatly impact our ability to learn and excel academically. Our students need to feel they belong. From a young age, they need to feel they belong. I hope that our students won’t be fighting this same battle that college students are fighting today.

Let’s not put our students in the same place.

References & Further Reading

1. Kennedy, R. (2015). Black Tape at Harvard Law. The New York Times, November 27 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/opinion/black-tape-at-harvard-law.html?_r=0
2. Gebreyes, R. (2015). Yale Student Explains Why Students Were Offended By Halloween Costumes Email. HuffPost College, November 12 2015 Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/yale-student-halloween-costumes-christakis_5644baa8e4b045bf3dedfe1e
3. Eligon, J. (2015). At University of Missouri, Black Students See a Campus Riven by Race. The New York Times, November 12 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/us/university-of-missouri-protests.html?_r=0
4. Kimball, R. (2015). Rise of the College Crybullies. The WallStreet Journal, November 13 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-the-college-crybullies-1447458587
5. Murphy Paul, A. (2015). The Yale Controversy is Really About Belonging. Time Magazine, November 11 2015. Retrieved from: http://time.com/4108632/yale-controversy-belonging/
6. Butler, B. (2014).‘I, Too, Am Harvard’: Black students show they belong. The Washington Post, March 5 2014. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2014/03/05/i-too-am-harvard-black-students-show-they-belong/
7. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society:The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press.
8. Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 797-811. doi:10.1037/0022- 3514.69.5.797
9. Schmader, T., Johns, M., & Forbes, C. (2008). An integrated process model of stereotype threat effects on performance. Psychological Review, 115, 336-356. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.115.2.336
10. Eisenberger N. & Cole S.W. (2012). Social neuroscience and health: neurophysiological mechanisms linking social ties with physical health. Nature neuroscience, 15 (5), 669-74
11. Osterman, K. F. (2000). Students’ need for belonging in the school community. Review of Educational Research, 70, 323-367. doi:10.3102/00346543070003323
12. Pittman, L. D. & Richmond, A. (2007). Academic and psychological functioning in late adolescence: The importance of school belonging. The Journal of Experimental Education, 75, 270-290. doi:10.3200/JEXE.75.4.270-292
13. Walton, G. M. & Cohen, G.L. (2007). A question of belonging: race, social fit, and achievement. J Pers. Soc. Psychology, 92(1), 82-96.
14. Ladson-Billings, G. (1995a).  Multicultural teacher education: Research, practice, and policy.  In J.A. Banks & C.A.M. Banks (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education(pp. 747-759). New York: Macmillan.
15. Willms J.D. (2000). Student Engagement At School and A Sense of Belonging and Participation. Retrieved from:http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/programmeforinternationalstudentassessmentpisa/33689437.pdf
16. Reichl, C. J. (2000). The principal’s role in creating inclusive schools for diverse students: A review of normative, empirical, and critical literature on the practice of educational administration. Review of Educational Research 70 (1): 55–81.
17. Ladson-Billings, G. (1995b). But that’s just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy.  Theory Into Practice, 34(3), 159-165.
18. Zeilinger, J. (2015).These Students Were Told They Don’t Fit Their College’s Mold But They’re Fighting Back. November 13 2015. Retrieved from: http://mic.com/articles/128453/these-students-were-told-they-don-t-fit-their-college-s-mold-but-they-re-fighting-back#.44mUgwf7Q
19. Bidgood, J. (2016). Students Say Racial Hostilities Simmered at Historic Boston Latin School. The New York Times, January 30th 2016. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/education/students-say-racial-hostilities-simmered-at-historic-boston-latin-school.html

• Faircloth, B. S., & Hamm, J. V. (2005). Sense of belonging among high school students representing 4 ethnic groups. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 34(4), 293-309. 10.1007/s10964-005-5752-7
• Schmader, T. (2010). Stereotype threat deconstructed. Cur- rent Directions in Psychological Science, 19, 14-18. doi: 10.1177/0963721409359292
• During the course of writing this article news emerged from Boston Latin School of similar issues. Read more here

Our world is becoming increasingly globalized. This interconnectedness grants us access to languages of countries we have never been to. Through the migration of people, languages have also migrated to places they never existed even ten years ago, and many countries are now host to countless languages beyond their native tongue.

Should this change the languages that we learn to speak?

There are many obvious advantages to knowing multiple languages. When traveling, for example, you can ask where the bathroom is or how much something costs. When at the airport, you may be able to translate for a fellow passenger struggling to communicate. You can dig more deeply into a favorite story with foreign roots by enjoying it in its original language. These may be little things, but they can make life a little easier and a lot more exciting. But the perks are more profound than that.

The Cultural Value of Speaking the Language

Language is like a window into another culture’s values, history, and perspective. As such, being able to speak another language helps you connect with that culture more deeply. The range of words can give you insight into what is prioritized in a society and the nuanced synonyms can give you a sense of what concepts call for the most attention. Fluency can even provide hints about a culture’s history through the language’s evolution over time.

I lived in Thailand for two years before I made a conscious effort to learn some Thai. Learning and understanding even the basic greeting taught me so much. “Have you eaten yet”, is one of the first few things you ask someone when greeting one another. Much of Thai culture is centered around food, and they are world famous for their hospitality, so it makes sense that this would be mirrored in their language. As I continued to learn more Thai, I also learned much more about the culture that crafted the tongue.

The Complicated History of Bilingualism

Being bilingual is seen as a valuable skill and an advantage today. This, however, has not always been the case. There was a time when speaking another language in the U.S. was looked down upon (one may argue, in some places it still is). Not too long ago, when families immigrated to the U.S., in an attempt to assimilate to society, parents would sometimes not allow their children to speak their mother-tongue – even at home. My friend, whose family moved from Egypt, tells me how his parents prohibited him and his siblings from speaking in Egyptian to one another, and even remembers being smacked on occasion when he repeatedly did so.

There was a time when English language learning was not thought to be the responsibility of schools. Educators and policy makers believed that the students from language minorities should be able to do the linguistic adjustment on their own. When these children were not able to achieve academically, the parents and home environments were marked as the predominant issue. This attitude sheds light on why my friend experienced such strong reactions from his parents when he would speak Egyptian. They were afraid.

The Myth of Bilingual Deficits

Historically, there has also been a predominant fear that exposing children to more than one language at an early age will cause severe confusion and delay in language skills. Behavioral studies at the time suggested that young children’s brains were not developed enough to handle so much information, so two languages would be detrimental to brain development¹.

If this were true, it’s unlikely I would be writing this essay today. Growing up, my family regularly spoke four languages. My mother spoke in Urdu to us, my father spoke in English, our nanny spoke Hindko – a language of northern Pakistan, and my parents – in an attempt to not disclose private issues, would speak to one another in Punjabi (little did they know, we picked it up quite early on). To my knowledge, all of my family members are (at least objectively) fully functioning, fully literate adults.

We now know from research that learning one or two languages results in no major differences in developmental trajectories². Children learning two languages do sometimes struggle with “code switching”; but that just means that they may mix grammar or words from the different languages. This is a normal part of language learning and not indicative of language learning difficulties³. In early years, children’s vocabulary for each language on its own may be smaller compared to monolingual children, but when both languages are taken into account the total vocabulary is on par with monolingual children… and continues to grow⁴.

So knowing more than one language is awesome for traveling, meeting people from different countries, even landing some cool jobs. And being bilingual, to our knowledge, does not disrupt a child’s normal functioning. But what does bilingualism look like at the neural level? Do our brains looks different? Do we reap some benefits of knowing more than one language? Turns out, the answer seems to be yes.

The Neural Benefits of Bilingualism

There is evidence that bilingualism may improve executive functioning. Executive function is thought to be primarily housed in the front most part of the brain, in what we call the pre-frontal cortex (though research suggests it’s also part of much more complicated brain-wide networks). Executive function is a catch-all term for a lot of our cognitive processes, including working memory, reasoning, task flexibility, and problem solving as well as planning and execution – a lot of important things!

With such a wide range of executive functions, most study carve off a specific function that they’re interested in learning more about. Some studies, for example, have focused on how we process conflicting information. These researchers have found that those who were bilingual outperformed their monolingual counterparts on tasks that required conflicting information. These studies were done with the Stroop task and the “Simon Tests”, which judge how fast you respond to conflicting or confusing stimuli⁵.

The Stroop task consists of showing the word BLUE, for example, on a screen, but it’s written in yellow font. You must name the color of the font. and ignore the written word.
Sounds easy, but it’s difficult to do it with speed and accuracy when the color and word do not match. Try the test here.

This requires some inhibitory control as you are receiving competing perceptual information. Bilinguals were found to be better than monolinguals at tasks that used inhibitory control, and also at switching between two tasks in terms of speed and accuracy.

Apart from being better at sorting out conflicting information, other studies have found that bilinguals are also better able to filter out noise and distractions. On average, they seem to have the ability to exhibit greater focus regardless of what is going on around them. At a basic level, bilinguals seem have a heightened ability to monitor their environment.

Scientists theorize that the switching between languages quite often requires a “hyperawareness,”; it’s possible that the bilingual brain is primed to quickly code switch, or pick up what language is being spoken. In this study bilinguals both performed better and had less activity in the parts of the brain associated with monitoring. This may indicate that they are able to toggle between the two more efficiently and with less cognitive demand⁵.

So far we’ve discussed how being bilingual may improve executive function by having greater inhibitory control, being better able to switch between tasks, being able to filter out distractions and having a heightened ability to monitor their environment.

What else can it do? Turns out gives us some long-term aging benefits too.

How Bilingualism May Preserve the Brain

A growing body of evidence seems to indicate that language multiplicity can delay the onset of dementia by up to 5 years! In multiple studies Alzheimer patients who were bilingual reported the onset of symptoms at 77.7, whereas most monolinguals reported them at 72.6. Of course, it’s important to acknowledge that many of these studies are correlational. However, what’s particularly interesting is that in follow up studies it was found that the brains of the bilingual people actually had twice as much physical atrophy in regions associated with Alzheimers. Interestingly, despite the bilinguals’ higher amount of atrophy, they performed on par with monolingual counterparts who had less diseased brains⁶. This suggests that the bilingual brain may be excellent at consolidating resources, requiring less healthy tissue to achieve the same results.

Although scientists don’t fully understand why this is the case, some assume that it has something to do with how language shapes the brain. Some theorize that speaking two languages increases blood and oxygen flow to the brain, keeping nerve connections more “fit” and active in a sense⁵.

In studies at Harvard they found that bilinguals seem to have more white matter in their frontal lobes (remember this is where our executive function area is) and temporal lobes (which is an area important to language)⁷. White matter is essentially the long fibers (axons) that connect cells in the brain, kind of like a communication pipeline. More white matter suggests more connections. These studies support previous studies that show that bilingualism may shape the brain function and structure in a unique way.

The Future of Bilingualism

After reading this you may think, well hey, I should really take up Spanish or maybe I shouldn’t have slacked off so much in class.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be how this works.

Professor Gigi Luk, from Harvard University, focuses on research on bilingualism. Her findings show that many of the benefits described are connected to a lifelong language experience that begins in childhood and continues through adulthood⁷. During childhood, the brain is in great flux, and it may be that language has a particular influence on brain networks during that stage, which can result in major benefits later in life. While it doesn’t seem like brushing up on that Spanish or French will help in this regard, it couldn’t hurt.

What we can take away, however, is just how much of a gift it may be to teach multiple languages to our students. While it may take a bit longer for them to reach full mastery of either language, once they do, and if they continue to practice both throughout their life, the richness of their global experience and the socio-cultural doors that will open to them are countless. With research pointing to its cognitive benefits, and our world becoming increasingly culturally interconnected, it seems clear that the goals of education align with the potential of bilingualism.

Children can’t typically make this choice for themselves, so it’s up to us to work towards a system that gives them the best of what education can offer.

 

References & Further Reading

1. Abutalebi, J., & Weekes, B. S. (2014). The Cognitive Neurology of Bilingualism in the Age of Globalization. Behavioural Neurology, 536727. [Paper]
2. Werker J. Perceptual Foundations of Bilingual Acquisition in Infancy. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences: The Year in Cognitive Neuroscience. 1251, 50-61. [Paper]
3. Genesee, F. (2009). Early childhood bilingualism: Perils and possibilities. Journal of Applied Research on Learning, 2, (2). [Paper]
4. Marchman, V., Fernald, A., & Hurtado, N. (2010). How vocabulary size in two languages relates to efficiency in spoken word recognition by young Spanish-English  J. Child Language, 37, 817-840. [Paper]
5. Bialystok E, Craik FIM, Klein R. (2004). Bilingualism, aging, and cognitive control: Evidence from the Simon Task. Psychology and Aging, (2), 290-303. [Paper]
6. Bialystok E, Craik F. I., Freedman M. (2007). Bilingualism as a protection against the on set of symptoms of dementia. Neuropsychologia, 45(2), 459-464. [Paper]
7. Luk G., Bialystok E., Craik F.,I.,M., Grady C., L. (2011). Lifelong bilingualism maintains white matter integrity in older adults. Journal of Neuroscience, 31(46), 16808–16813. [Paper]

• Mechelli A., Crinion J. T., Noppeney U.,Neurolinguistics: structural plasticity in the bilingual brain. Nature, [Paper]

 

I went to a school in the foothills of the Himalayas in Pakistan. The school consisted mostly of western children of aid workers, which meant that for the majority of my school years my family members were the only students of color. The school followed a U.S. school system, with bits of the British system interspersed throughout. Although I was not fully aware of it at the time, I look back at my early years in school and realize how often I was confused and slower than my peers at grasping what was going on in the lesson.

I remember sitting in math class trying to figure out a word problem about chipmunks. We were supposed to be counting their acorns but I found myself trying to figure out what the heck a chipmunk was to begin with. In English class I would listen to a British story about “A Day at School” with some strange “lollipop lady*” who would stand on the road and hold up a giant lollipop sign. Forget the point of the story, what is a lollipop lady? Try reading “The Magic School Bus” to a young girl from rural Pakistan. I was mesmerized. While all the other kids moved on to the amazing adventure of riding down the tongue and inside the human body, I was stuck on the cool yellow bus. Years later, when I first came to the U.S., I took a picture of a yellow school bus and sent it to my siblings with the caption, “the magic school buses!”

As I observe students in our beautiful, multicultural classrooms here in the U.S., these memories of life in an international school come back to me. When I see students struggling because they can’t quite grasp the cultural nuances, I’m reminded of the out-of-place chipmunks, lollipops, and big yellow buses of my childhood. In many ways those are the only things I remember about the lessons at my little school beneath the Himalayas. It wasn’t until I began studying educational neuroscience that I was finally able to put words to what was happening. How did those cross-cultural experiences affect my learning in those early years? How many things was my working memory juggling at once? I realize now, not only was I carrying the same “cognitive load” as other students; I was carrying a “cultural load” as well. Unpacking these important ideas will help us all become better learners and better educators.

How does working memory work?

Working memory is what we use to hold on to information in the short-term, retaining the ability to use and manipulate this information. For example, if I give you a problem:

6 x 2 =?

You can keep the two numbers in your head easily and at the same time figure out the answer.

Simple, right?

The main idea of cognitive load centers around the idea that there is a limited amount of information that our brains can take in and successfully process at a given time. The more data we send to our brain, the more “processing capacity” is used.

But what if I give you this problem instead:

2 x 3 x 5 x 7 x 9 x 2 = ?

On the one hand, this will be a real test on your working memory. You most likely will not be able to hold these numbers in your head like you could with the 6 and 2. Instead, you have to keep going back and looking at the problem. This is because for the average person this problem requires greater processing capacity to figure out. Simply put, cognitive load is the amount of mental effort being used in the working memory.

Of course, like most things in life, people differ in their processing capacities. This is probably most obvious in an expert/novice relationship. Experts have greater knowledge and familiarity in their area of expertise. This makes completing a task specific to their domain of expertise less of a cognitive load compared with a novice doing the same task. The expert doesn’t have to spend as much time getting to know the problem. You can also see this in children, who naturally have fewer points of reference (knowledge) than adults for how things work. They have fewer areas in their minds to peg ideas to or build concepts on. Therefore, children have a greater cognitive load than adults when trying to perform an activity or understand a new concept. There’s a lot more work for children to do to reach the same result.

It ultimately comes down to the ability to have a point of reference that is related to the new information that is being taught. Studies show that being able to relate to new information is important for all students. This suggests that lesson plans designed to connect to students’ “real worlds” are more effective than abstract lessons. When students don’t have any background knowledge needed to perform a task or comprehend a concept, they experience greater cognitive load. The good news is this is normal. All of us experience varying degrees of cognitive load when learning. If we didn’t, we would never learn! The better question to ask is when does this become a problem in our classrooms?

What happens when you overload working memory before you get to the point?

As an elementary school student, my inability to visualize a chipmunk made it more difficult for me to spend energy on the math aspect of the word problem. It added unnecessarily to the cognitive load. And lacking a point of reference for the “lollipop lady” also taxed my cognitive load as I tried to understand the story. My working memory was trying to hold on to the words “lollipop lady” as well as the rest of the words to make sense of the story. Somewhere, my brain was also trying to understand what a lollipop lady was in the first place, not to mention why she was standing in the middle of the road! When this extra cognitive load relates to foreign or cultural references, we call this cultural load.

Cultural load is the amount of culture-specific knowledge required to understand or perform a task (like figuring out a math problem or understanding a story). The concept of cultural load has become evident in a range of studies that evaluate the role of cultural “frame[s] of reference” in student performance. Growing understanding of cultural load has inspired calls for less culturally biased tests.
Studies suggest that using cultural knowledge and experiences that directly relate to our students can avoid some of this negative cognitive and cultural overload. Researchers have also found that academic success increases when students can take ownership of their learning. Regrettably, the concept of cultural load is often overlooked in classrooms.

What happens when we don’t consider the role of cultural load in the classroom?

One 1998 report showed that a disproportionate number of students from multicultural backgrounds may be inappropriately placed in special education classes. Some case studies talk about how children are labeled mentally disabled. In fact, in many cases testing revealed the children were functioning at a normal intellectual level. Sadly, it wasn’t until years later that schools began realizing their mistaken labels. This research reinforces the susceptibility of tests to carry a cultural and social bias, and begs the question: If it’s happening in our tests and we don’t know it, what might be happening in our classrooms? Of course, there are an array of factors that play into culturally and linguistically diverse populations having a higher percentage of students in special education that have not been discussed here. That being said, the research aligns with the experiences of many students just like me: we must acknowledge the need for more culturally aware and accepting classrooms.

*Lollipop Lady – noun. British informal. A woman who is employed to help children cross the road safely near a school by holding up a circular sign on a pole to stop the traffic. Not a woman with a giant lollipop.

If you didn’t know that, you may have experienced some “cultural load” first-hand with that cultural reference 😉

References & Further Reading

1. Artiles, A. J., & Zamora-Duran, G. (1997). Reducing disproportionate representation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special and gifted education. Reston, VA: The Council for Exceptional Children. [Book]
2. Benson, E. (2003). Intelligence across cultures: Research in Africa, Asian, and Latin America in showing how culture and intelligence interact. American Psychological Association, 34(2), 56. [Paper] 
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