Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 27, Number 4, 1 April 2010 — Study underscores benefits of culture-based learning [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Study underscores benefits of culture-based learning

By Lisa Asato KaWai Ola Arecently released study provides hard evidence for something that educators

have known in their na'au for years - that culture-based education produces students who do better in school and who feel better about themselves, said a co-project director of the study. "We've always known that culture matters in education, but it's been based on an aneedotal, na'au, gut level (sense)," said Shawn Kana'iaupuni of Kamehameha Schools, who co-directed the Hawaiian Cultural Influences in Education study with colleague Brandon Ledward. "We never had any empirical, large-scale data that was able to assess impact on student outcomes," she said, adding that educators, parents and students all reported that culturebased education was valuable. "We just didn't

have a statistical data set that told us it was good." The study, first released to a public audience at a Feb. 26 luneheon, involved middle and high schools on Kaua'i, O'ahu, Moloka'i, Maui and Hawai'i. Many school types participated - conventional state Depart-

ment of Education schools, kula kaiapuni (Hawaiian immersion programs), Kamehameha Schools' three K-12 campuses and public charter schools, including Hawaiianfocused and others. The study was a partnership among Kamehameha Schools, the DOE and Nā Lei Na'auao Hawaiian Charter School Allianee and encompassed surveys of 600 teachers, 2,969 students and 2,264 parents or caregivers. Principals were also surveyed but their response rate was too low to be considered meaningful for the study. Ledward, the co-project director and a senior research associate with Kamehameha See CULTURE-BASED STUDY on page 19

Brandon Ledward and Shawn Kana'iaupuni of Kamehameha Schools, Scott Thomas of Claremont Graduate University, Keiki Kawai'ae'a of Ka Haka 'Ula 0 Ke'elikō lani College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawai'i-Hilo and Ronald Heek of UH-Mōnoa College of Education. - Photo: LisaAsato

Co-project directors Shawn Kana'iaupuni and Brandon Ledward.

CULTURE-BASED STUDY

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Schools' Research and Evaluation Division, said the study "helps redefine what success means for our keiki" by broadening the measure of success to go beyond test scores and encompass a student's sense of self-worth and how grounded they are in terms of culture, their community and family. "A lot of the 21 st century skills deal with eollaboration, critical thinking, eommunieahon and the ability to synthesize ideas," he said. "I think a lot of that takes shape when a student is engaged as a learner, knows who they are and has strong eonneetions to people. That helps us see success in a new way. We're contributing to that. Yes, test scores are important, but it's not the whole picture." Culture-based education, or CBE, embraces best practices in a cultural context, he said, noting that the study showed that teachers often used both conventional best practices and culture-based education in their teaching. "That means that these two approaches to learning really go hand in hand," he said. "We find that teachers who use one practice tend to use the other." Culture-based education is founded upon five elements: recognizing and using native or heritage language; actively involving family and community in the development of curricula, everyday learning and leadership; structuring the school and the classroom in a culturally appropriate way; making learning meaningful and relevant through culturally grounded content and assessment; and gathering and maintaining data using various methods to ensure student progress in culturally responsible ways. Some highlighted results are:

• Fifty-three percent of teachers surveyeduse minimal amounts of culture-based education, 33 percent are moderate users and 13.5 percent are high users. • About one-third of non-Hawaiian teachers respondents and 70 percent of Hawaiian teacher respondents reported moderate or high use of CBE. • Forty-eight percent of the total teachers surveyed reported providing students' family members with information about how they ean support their ehildren's leaming at home on a monthly basis. Almost 30 percent reported integrating 'ohana, kūpuna and community members into their classes onee a month. • CBE use by teachers had a positive impact on students' socioemotional development. The quality of students' socioemotional development positively impacted their test cores in reading and math. CBE was not limited to Hawaiian schools or Hawaiian-focused charter schools, whieh shows that CBE is not limited to nontraditional settings, Ledward said. "You ean do culture-based education practices in a traditional setting with chaikboards and four walls." Kana'iaupuni, the director of Kamehameha Schools' Puhlie Education Support Division, said the study provides data that "shows us that all of that theory was right - if you ean increase relevance through language and culture, that students' math and reading goes up as well as their socioemotional development." Ledward said the data was so comprehensive that it could be mined for more information. Multilevel statistical analyses on the data was conducted by Scott Thomas, educational studies professor at Claremont Graduate University in Califomia, and Ronald Heek, educational administration professor at the University of Hawai'i-Mānoa. ■