The Culturally Proficient Professoriate 53- The Guiding Principles provide values to inform our work.
- The Continuum allows us to describing unhealthy and healthy values, behaviors,
policies and practices - both within our programs and for use by the students in
our programs. - The 5 Essential Elements are the standards that guide our work, most notably as
we embrace emerging professional and state standards and guidelines. - The Barriers are forces that push back against us as we do our work and with
planning can be mitigated and overcome.
THE GUIDING PRINCIPLES
The first tool is the Guiding Principles. I am posing a few questions and ask you to raise
your hands when you agree:
- How many in the room believe that racism has existed in this country? That it still
persists, even today? - Same for historical sexism? That it still persists?
- Same for classism? That it still persists?
- Same for heterosexism? That it still persists?
- Other forms of oppression? And, today?
- Thank you.
The reason for asking these questions is not only to confront us with the legacy of our
history. It is to acknowledge and actively remind us that vestiges of many of the ugly periods
of our history continue with us today. In many cases these legacies are the underpinnings of
the achievement gap that we in education have failed to bring to center stage for almost 2
generations now. A second reason for raising these questions is the importance of aligning
our espoused theory of leadership with our theory-in-action. Congruence between what we
profess and what we do is guided by our core values. Cultural Proficiency has a set of core
values expressed as guiding principles. Table 1 lists the guiding principles.Table 1. The Guiding Principles of Cultural Proficiency.- Culture is a predominant force in people and school’s lives.
- People are served in varying degrees by the dominant culture.
- People have group identities and individual identities.
- Diversity within cultures is vast and significant.
- Each cultural group has unique cultural needs.
- The best of both worlds enhances the capacity of all.
To work with the Guiding Principles in detail takes more time than we have today, so I
will draw our attention to two important concepts within the principles – that of Culture and
Dominant Group:
- Culture is the recognition that our society is comprised of groups, each with
distinctive characteristics – racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, social class, faith,
ableness, among many others, including organizational culture.