An AnnoTATeD sTuDenT inTroDuCTion: ProViDing A ConTeXT For A Thesis 119KRIS GUTIÉRREZ
From “Teaching Toward Possibility: Building
Cultural Supports for Robust Learning”C
onsider the potential learning power of a unit on
environmental inequities or environment racism
for middle or high school students in which students
are provided the opportunity to examine the issue
deeply and broadly. We did just this over a number of
years in rigorous summer programs for high school
students from migrant farm worker backgrounds.
Students learned environmental science, learned
traditional information about the environment,
learned about the history of the area of study, as well
as the history of environmental issues in their local
and immediate communities. This way of learning
required interdisciplinary reading, including read-
ing across genres, points of view, and across histori-
cal time and space. These learning practices enticed
students to want to learn more, to research, and to
make connections across relevant ideas and their var-
ied meanings within and across academic and home
communities. In short, instruction was coherent, his-
toricized, textured, layered, and deeply supported in
ways that allowed students to access and engage with
rigorous texts and high status knowledge, as well as
work in and through the contradictions and tensions
inherent in knowledge production and authentic
science/learning issues.
In the following section, I draw on the case of
teaching science to migrant students mentioned
above to elaborate a challenge to reductive ap-
proaches to teaching and learning that offer the
“quick-fix” and provide “off the shelf” solutions to
education; that is, those relying on silver bullet solu-
tions to solve complex educational problems or using
theory and research uncritically or without sufficient
understanding because it is fashionable to do so. One
such quick-fix approach is found in learning styles
approaches to learning, particularly cultural learning
styles conceptions in which regularities in culturalThe author
establishes the
relevance and
timeliness of the
issue.This is particularly
relevant for an
audience of teachers
who want to know how
to motivate students
whose backgrounds
they may unfamiliar
with.Gutiérrez further
establishes the
relevance of teaching
non-dominant
students and
seeks to correct
a misconception
about the nature of
teaching, learning,
and culture.1205_GRE_60141_Ch5_106_128.indd 119 11/11/14 2:56 PM