0.1 Beyond convention, beyond critique: toward a third way of  (Page 3/12)

Many of the pedagogical strategies described by Brown (2004) are appropriate for the awareness stage, including cultural autobiographies, life history interviews, reflective analysis journals, and cross-cultural interviews. Students can review a variety of achievement and other types of data on different cultural groups, including published national, state, and local data as well as data students gather directly from their local communities and schools. Other possible learning activities include “study of a stranger,” a day of shadowing and conversing with a person from a culture different from one’s own; and teams of students doing cultural histories of diverse communities, including review of historical documents, site visits, and interviews of older community members from different cultures. Experiential activities at the awareness stage should be complimented with appropriate readings, dialogue among professors and students, and ongoing assistance and feedback.

Care

The concept of care in education is grounded in the feminist tradition (Noddings, 1984, 2001, 2005). “Caring is not just a warm, fuzzy feeling that makes people kind and likable. Caring implies a continuous search for competence. When we care, we want to do the very best for the objects of our care” (Noddings, 1995, p. 676). Care is a critical concept in the work for equity and social justice because merely being aware of inequity and its negative effects does not necessarily mean that one cares enough about the victims to join with them in the struggle for transformation. The challenge to principal preparation is not only to increase future principals’ care for various cultural groups but also to increase pre-service principals’ capacity to help others to care.

A good place to learn about care is the research on culturally responsive principals. Madhlangobe (2009), for example, carried out a long-term case study of Faith, an assistant principal in a culturally diverse school who was judged by an expert panel, teachers, students, and parents to be highly culturally responsive. Madhlangobe found that caring was a theme running through Faith’s leadership. First and foremost, Faith demonstrated care in her passion for children. Faith tried to understand each student as an individual, listening to them and paying attention to their feelings and needs. Faith both respected and comforted students when they came to her with difficulties. Faith also showed her teachers that she cared for them, as a strategy to encourage the teachers to care for students. Finally, Faith showed parents that she cared for their students by making conversations with parents a top priority and regularly sharing with them information on their children. Faith’s ultimate goal in caring for teachers, parents, and students was to “see all students develop the same caring and responsible behaviors towards each other” (p. 193).

Noddings (2005) believes an act of caring is not complete unless the cared-for reciprocates with “reception, recognition, and response” (p. 16). Others take a broader view of caring. For example, Desmond Tutu (2011) described the traditional African concept of Ubuntu :