Should We Use a Capital Framework to Understand Culture? Applying Cultural Capital to Communities of Color

Social science research on communities of color has long been shaped by theories of social and cultural capital. This article is a hermeneutic reading of metaphorical capital frameworks, including community cultural wealth and funds of knowledge. Financial capital, the basis of these frameworks, is premised on unequal exchange. Money only becomes capital when it is not spent, but is instead invested, manipulated, and exploited. Metaphorical capitals have been criticized as imprecise, falsely quantitative, and inequitable. Some research assumes that, rather than reinforcing economic class, metaphorical capital somehow nullifies class or replaces economic capital. Yet marginalized students, by definition, have been excluded by dominant culture. Compared to low socioeconomic status (SES) students of color, high SES students have a wealth of capital, in all forms. Metaphorical capital conjures the economic worldview of capitalism, imposing a capitalist, market-based worldview. Frameworks of metaphorical capital use neoliberal vocabulary, arguably endorsing capitalism's hegemony. The supposed metaphorical capital is not capital at all; by presenting it as capital, researchers’ goals become inconsistent with their own theoretical frameworks. There may be better ways to theorize culture. This article concludes by proposing four frameworks—possibilities that interpret culture without relying on capital.     

Have conceptual reforms (and one anti‐reform) in preservice teacher education improved the education of multicultural,multilingual children and youth?

This article examines three conceptual reforms in US teacher education (competency‐based teacher education (CBTE), reflective teacher education (RTE) and constructivist teacher education (CTE)) for their effects on the education of multicultural, multilingual youth, as well as considering alternative certification (AC), known here as an ‘anti‐reform’. The author suggests that although each reform made incremental improvements in the ways that preservice teachers are prepared to teach multilingual and multicultural learners, none significantly altered the education of under‐served children and youth. For instance, CTE points out the importance of prior knowledge, but fails in connecting its core concepts with culturally relevant instruction. CBTE, while also generally failing to alter teacher preparation for multicultural learners, did try to make explicit connections for preservice teachers. RTE made explicit the moral consequences of working in diverse communities but fell short when it altered the apprenticeship–mentor relationship. AC of teachers is presented as the work of neo‐liberals whose largely successful efforts to deregulate teacher preparation offer both an improvement and retrenchment for urban children and youth. Finally, the article links the field’s focus on the preparation of teachers for diverse students and the moral dimension of teacher education, concluding that such a connection may be the only way to maintain the professional school preparation of teachers.     

Being there: Social service and teacher education at the University of Houston

As the school-age population grows in its ethnic and economic diversity, those who become teachers remain overwhelmingly white, female, and middle class. To assist teacher education students understand a world that is largely unfamiliar to them, the University of Houston teacher preparation program offers a volunteer experience in an urban social service agency for its students as part of a cultural awareness requirement. The results of this program suggest that it may help preservice teachers to understand better the lives of the children they will face and hence better prepare them to teach, perhaps diminishing the revolving door of teachers in urban classrooms.Kip Téllez received his Ph.D. from The Claremont Graduate School in 1991. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Houston. His present academic interests include the reexamination of pragmatism, teacher education, and Latino youth gangs. Peter S. Hlebowitsh received his Ed.D. from the Rutgers Graduate School of Education. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Houston. His present scholarly interests are in curriculum theory, curriculum history, and teacher education.     

English Language Standards in California,China and Mexico: History,Comparison, and Analysis

Interchange - Learning standards have become a prominent feature for schools and school systems worldwide. Our paper describes the development of recent English teaching standards in California,...     

Brand communication through digital influencers: Leveraging blogger engagement

The growing power of bloggers to influence their connected network has emerged as a new communication venue for brands. This study elaborates upon the role of bloggers in brand communication, and reveals how brands can engage with bloggers, currently considered as online opinion leaders, from the perspective of the two-step flow theory. Following clarification of the aims of the study, we report on in-depth interviews with 17 brand and digital agency representatives, selected because they regard communication with bloggers as an important strategy in increasing the influence of their brands among online communities. This exploratory study reflects current blogger communication implementations, and concludes with a discussion of seven major issues arising from the literature review and interviews (definition of bloggers, blogger selection criteria, digital integration, power of bloggers, long-term relationship building with bloggers, measurement, and budgetary issues in blogger communication). These areas represent relatively unexplored areas of blogger engagement from both an academic and managerial perspective. Based on the findings of the interviews, we propose a model which traces the influencer role of bloggers from the two-step flow theory perspective. This model is named as the brand communication through digital influencers model.