Twelfth International Conference on e-Learning & Innovative Pedagogies

Abstract

Despite decades of legal and other regulatory efforts to create culture-fair and safe public schools, structural problems impede progress. Cultural bias and discrimination permeate public school policies, procedures, practices, and programs. Major roadblocks to resolving these problems are: absence of a procedure for systematically evaluating school climates to determine unique sources and types of cultural bias and discrimination, and, subsequent inabilities to target interventions for particular individuals, groups, and institutional entities. Authors propose use of systematic, web-based evaluations of school cultural climates using the Survey of Cultural Attitudes and Behaviors (SCAB), which is designed to collect ongoing quantitative and qualitative data from students, teachers, administrators, and staff via a school-specific, internet link in order to identify strengths and limitations of the school’s cultural climate. At three-month intervals, researchers analyze data in order to determine specific problem areas and targets for intervention. Based upon the data trends, researchers create unique remediation plans for presentation to school boards and administrators for individuals and/or groups, with specific recommendations for modifications of school policies. Through this process of ubiquitous, web-based evaluation, school administrators, teachers, students, and staff collaboratively identify cultural dynamics that hamper student learning and safety, hold individuals and groups accountable for their actions, reduce the incidence of cultural bias and discrimination, provide empirical evidence to modify school policies, and promote the development of a culture-fair and safe institutional climate. Authors illuminate use of the proposed evaluation model by describing elements of previous research using the SCAB.