Barry Osborne

In 1983, I conducted an ethnographic investigation of five elementary classrooms in the Native American Pueblo of Zuni (Osborne, 1983). My initial plan was to compare two teachers (one Zuni and one Anglo) on the basis of the cultural congruence of their teaching behaviors. Erickson and Mohatt (1982) had conducted a similar study of two grade-one teachers in an Odawan village school. They found that the Odawan teacher with years of teaching experience in her village taught quite differently from the accomplished Anglo male teacher at the beginning of his first year in the village. However, by the end of his first school year the Anglo teacher’s behaviors more nearly approached the culturally congruent behaviors of the Odawan teacher. This paper offers some insights into the notions of cultural congruence, ethnicity and fused biculturalism as they derive from the Zuni study.

As an Australian teacher-educator deeply involved in preparing teachers (European, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) to teach in Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander communities, I was keen to follow up the Erickson and Mohatt (1982) study for several reasons.

First, if Anglo teachers could adjust to new cultural settings and teach in ways congruent with the child-rearing practices of the local community, then there was a point in continuing to prepare Europeans to teach in community schools.

Second, identifying elements of cultural congruence would certainly provide valuable information for new teachers at Zuni and some of these behaviors might be applicable in Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander schools.

Third, the study might throw some light on the conditions which fostered cultural congruence, something which the Erickson and Mohatt study was sketchy about. They simply observed that there was a sensitive and supportive principal and that the Anglo teacher had excellent "radar" to tap into cultural differences.

Fourth, the study might throw some light on the cultural difference theory which espouses cultural congruence in the classroom (Au & Jordan, 1980; Philips, 1972) and McDermott’s challenge to cultural difference theory (McDermott & Gospodinoff, 1979).

This challenge initially revolved around the maintenance of ethnic borders, but later came to be known as collusion (McDermott & Tylbor, 1982). The collusion explanation accepts that there are differences between cultures and argues that these differences are maintained or exaggerated in day-to-day interactions for economic and socio-political reasons as people play along with each other in predetermined roles. Hence, there were both potentially practical and theoretical reasons for the Zuni study.

These four issues are discussed at length elsewhere (Osborne, 1983, 1985, and 1986). However, this paper deals with two of three unintended issues (see Note 2) which developed during the study. One was the nature of ethnicity and the other was fused biculturalism. Such unintended foci are not uncommon in ethnographic research (Agar, 1986; Spindler, 1982); indeed, I see it as one of its strengths.

My research proposal called for the selection of two teachers, one Zuni and the other Anglo. Fortunately, ethnographic studies are meant to be flexible. I say "fortunately" because the research question was inappropriately phrased. It was based on an assumption that one Zuni and one Anglo teacher would be representative of the majority of Zunis on the one hand and of the majority of the Anglos on the other. By the end of the second full day in the field, this assumption was found to be untenable.

On the first day I went to DY and ZE (see Note 3) to discuss the research project with four teachers of grades one and two. One Anglo teacher, Annette, had been raised at Zuni since kindergarten. She had taken all her schooling, until college, at Zuni. Annette had been teaching in Zuni for five years and volun teered to be in the study. So did another Anglo, Lee, who had been teaching at Zuni for nearly 12 years. At DY two Zuni teachers volunteered. J.J. had been raised at Zuni and had been teaching there for five years. Tania, on the other hand, had been raised away from the Pueblo, and returned to it 11 years ago, and had been teaching at Zuni for the past five years. Had I stayed with the original research proposal the obvious choices were Lee and J.J. At least in terms of representatives of their ethnic groups, they were the logical choices. However, their different lengths of time teaching, together with the fact that Lee was teaching a class with slightly different skill development than J.J., suggested that extraneous variables could influence the study in ways which might make it difficult to compare the two teachers (see Note 5).

From the start, I decided to work with all four teachers instead of selecting just two. This decision acknowledged the superficiality of ascribing similarities and differences between teachers on the basis of their ethnic origins alone. Life experiences now became part of the description of each teacher. Subsequent reading of Erickson (1976) justified this early decision to change the basic research strategy. In his study of interpersonal communication in gate-keeping encounters (that is, where interviewers were engaged in junior college counseling or job interviews (Erickson, 1976, p. 112)), he found that ethnicity "did not predict cultural style of communication directly—there was considerable variability within ethnic category" (p. 139). Furthermore, some people were able to switch communication style according to the cultural style of the person they were talking to. This ability to switch was related to the "biculturality" or "triculturality" of the person (p. 139).

First impressions of the teachers who volunteered to take part were that there were three bicultural persons with varying degrees of skill in Zuni culture and language: J.J. probably had the greatest expertise in the culture and language, Tania probably had less, and Annette may have had as much or even more expertise in the culture and language than Tania because, although she is Anglo, she had been raised on the Pueblo since kindergarten. The other Anglo, Lee, had been teaching in Zuni for nearly 12 years and so had considerable time to learn aspects of the language and culture or at least to make substantial adaptations to the learning preferences of Zuni children.

Some of the volunteer teachers suggested that another teacher become involved in the study. At the initial discussion of the project with teachers, she was absent because of a family bereavement. On the third day of the first full week of observations, this teacher, Frances, and I were sitting at the same work table. I asked her if she would like to be part of the study. She agreed, so now there were five volunteer teachers. Frances is Anglo, had been in Zuni for four years, and had been teaching at DY for two and one-half years.

The youngest volunteer teachers were in their early 30s, and the other three were about 40. They were ranked from competent to excellent by principals from both schools. This ranking was made specifically in terms of quality of instruction; other facets of being a teacher, like relationships with staff or parents, were not included in the appraisals. Both principals had extensive professional contact with each of the volunteer teachers, whether through mutual involvement in the Follow-Through Program, through being their principal, or through both. This brief summary of the principals’ extensive comments about the teachers is vague to protect the anonymity of both the teachers and the principals as well as the privacy of all involved. Nevertheless, both principals saw all the teachers as at least competent and some of them as excellent. These appraisals were highly congruent with my own 93 hours of observations and with the interview data gathered during the study.

All five teachers were very concerned about their students, worked very hard to achieve their goals, and ran well-organized, colorful classrooms in which the students displayed considerable self-control. However, despite the similarities there were some crucial differences. In particular, ethnicity becomes much more complex when life experiences, language spoken, and cultural expertise are built into simple ascription of ethnicity—she’s Anglo, he’s Zuni. It is worthwhile to look at these complexities of ethnicity. The information provided here is based on the two Zuni teachers described in Chapter 5 (Osborne, 1983) and reworking field notes of that study.

J.J. is a Zuni and was raised at Zuni. Upon her graduation from high school, she attended college for one year but then discontinued study for financial reasons. After working in the Headstart program and as a waitress, J.J. returned to another year of college life. Part of that on-campus experience included practice teaching at an "innovative school" which had predominantly Anglo students. Marriage interrupted her college education, and she returned to the Pueblo to work as an aide after a few years in Anglo society. The arrival of the All Indian Pueblo Council On-Site Program provided the opportunity for her to complete her basic teacher education. Since 1978, J.J. has been teaching at DY, always with her current grade level. She completed her M. A. through the On-Site Program in 1983.

As she described the educational goals she saw as appropriate for Zuni, J.J. said:

In other words, J.J. is convinced that biculturalism is the only possibility for Zuni people. Later, she expanded this idea:

When asked what was involved in a "balanced" education, she replied:

Interviewer:

J.J.:

J.J.’s comments about "we don’t have a choice" were very important to her. She explained in the fourth interview that her sojourn into the Anglo world had been an attempt to deny her Zuni heritage. (Some of the able Grade 12 students at Zuni High School had similar perspectives—to leave the Pueblo, forget about being Zuni, and to "make it" in the Anglo world.) J.J. found this to be impossible—she was never fully accepted as an Anglo despite her marriage to an Anglo. She felt compelled to return to her origins, to return to the identity she had tried to shed. And, while the return to Zuni life was accomplished, she felt less accepted than she had before she left. Her perception was that her peers did not share as much with her as they used to because she did not see things their way anymore. Perhaps a class factor was also coming into play (Connell, 1985), but J.J. did not allude to this. It is interesting to note, then, that J.J. was keen for the children to be bilingual and bicultural and not "made over" into Anglos.

While J.J. wanted to avoid seeing Zuni children "made over into Anglos," there are examples of academically successful Black Americans (Silberman, 1964, p. 262) and Maoris (Fitzgerald, 1974) holding quite strong assimilationist goals for students with the same ethnic backgrounds as themselves. So, it does not follow that membership of an ethnic minority group automatically produces adherence to bicultural goals.

Tania, like J.J., wanted to see bilingual-bicultural education at Zuni. However, she was not fluent in Zuni. Tania learned Zuni but spoke it "with an accent" and lacked the technical terminology to be able to use it in much of the curriculum. As a result, she rarely used it in the classroom. Conversely, J.J., who was fluent in Zuni, used it extensively across the curriculum.

It was not just in language expertise or usage that Tania was different from J.J., however. Tania is a Zuni teacher who was raised away from the Pueblo. After completing three years of college geared towards becoming a teacher, she came with her Zuni husband to settle in the Pueblo in 1972. They had lived at nearby Gallup for the previous 10 years. When Tania first came to Zuni she worked as a secretary in the Follow-Through Program, which continued her interest in teaching as a career. The advent of the All-Indian Pueblo Council On-Site Teacher Education Program provided her with the opportunity to qualify as a teacher. Tania completed her teaching practice at Zuni, began teaching at DY six years ago, and completed her M A through the On-Site Program in 1983. Tania did not find it easy to become incorporated into Pueblo life, as the following excerpt indicates:

This staternent led to a probe for the ways in which this shift to thePueblo had been difficult:

The way Tania had compared herself "in some degree" with non-Indians coming to the Pueblo prompted a further probe:

Interviewer:

Tania:

Interviewer:

Tania:

Subsequently, Tania went on to explain how she became more socially involved:

When queried about whether there is "a place for Anglo women to do the same," she continued:

This discussion of fitting into Pueblo life provides considerable contexting of Tania. Furthermore, it shows how her life experiences away from the Pueblo and having to learn the Zuni language as an adult add to the dimension of ethnicity in and of itself.

Nevertheless, both Tania and J.J. encouraged more independence from their pupils than did any of the Anglo teachers (Osborne, 1986, p. 4). This independence was something strongly expected by Zuni parents and the Zuni teachers seemed to be more in tune with this expectation than any of the Anglos. Furthermore, two of the three Anglo teachers, Annette and Lee, had life experiences which assisted them to teach in culturally congruent ways. Their long-term residence at Zuni prompted this congruence (see Osborne, 1983, Chapter V), so they did not force eye-contact from their students, they did not force public performances on children, and they used local every day events in their curriculum.

Clearly, then, membership of an ethnic group is not sufficient condition for a teacher to be able to teach children from their own ethnic group congruently. Language expertise, life experiences, values and goals are all important to the possibility and development of culturally congruent teaching behaviors.

In many ways, culturally congruent teaching is a real benefit for young elementary students because it minimizes the difficulties children face as they initially go to school. It is important to avoid "turning them off’ to the educational enterprise early in their school careers. However, to teach in a way which is entirely congruent with their home culture is neither possible nor desirable. It is not possible because the classroom by its very nature, as we know it, simply forces some culturally incongruent behaviors upon teachers (see Osborne, 1983, p. 259). Even if it were possible, complete cultural congruence is not desirable because it does not prepare students for the bicultural existence they have to live. This point is implicit in Frances’ statements (Osborne, 1983, p. 196), and explicit in her later feedback to me. It is also explicit in J.J.’s comments presented earlier. There is no choice about having to live at least partly in Anglo society (Osborne, 1983, p. 245). Furthermore, the Zuni School Board members include biculturalism as an important goal (p. 178).

Even more frequently stressed than simple bicultural skills was the Zuni School Board’s emphasis on academic success (p. 179). In order to be bicultural and in order to achieve academic success, students at Zuni need to be introduced to Anglo customs, values, and ways of behaving. This does not mean that Zuni students need to "lose where they are coming from" (p. 245). By displaying respect for, sensitivity to, and optimum cultural congruence with the cultural behaviors children bring to school, teachers in the lower elementary grades can ease them into school life and bicultural competence in Anglo society.

In later grades, new demands can be introduced. And, as they are introduced, the teachers are well advised to spell out, for their students, the cultural assumptions which underpin these new behaviors (Kleinfeld, 1975). The original study showed that Anglo teachers can introduce some of these new behaviors during the early elementary years. For instance, touching was introduced by Lee and oral public performance was introduced by Annette. Both sets of behaviors were effective, in so far as no student was seen to be uncomfortable or was even required to do something which made him uncomfortable. Even Susan’s quiet refusal to introduce the Lukk’ya Book on the audio-cassette was a response to an option provided by the teacher (Osborne, 1983, p. 226) which kept pressure off her in Annette’s room (see Note 7). Both sets of behaviors were also effective in that both classrooms were busy, productive, and fostered much oral language. In other words, neither classroom suffered from the silent withdrawal of students described in several earlier studies (Dumont, 1972; Spindler, 1974; Dumont & Wax, 1976; Wax, 1976). Similar indicators of student participation in work and oral language occurred in the two Zuni teacher’s rooms. The students were comfortable in all four rooms: the appropriate introduction of new behaviors did not appear to adversely affect these indicators of effectiveness.

Accordingly, it is possible to argue that culturally congruent teaching behaviors offer a real alternative to assimilationist—ones which either try to ignore the minority group’s cultural differences or try to undermine those differences. Besides adjusting teaching behaviors so that they become more culturally congruent, it is also necessary to introduce new demands. The new demands are those behavioral, attitudinal, and value adjustments the Zuni students have to make if they are going to be comfortable and competent in Anglo settings. Introduction of these new demands is best done by teachers, perhaps with the pupils in higher grades, who spell out for their students the assumptions on which their classrooms (and ultimately their schools) are based.

However, the issue is not easily reducible to training Anglo teachers to be more culturally congruent in their behaviors or to appointing more Zuni teachers who know how to, and do, use culturally congruent approaches.

Equally, more is at stake than simply teaching Zuni students how to become increasingly competent in Anglo schools. A whole culture is at stake. Zuni culture could be lost. Hence, the stress placed upon insiders and outsiders elsewhere (Osborne, 1983, Chapter 6; Osborne, 1986). It is unreasonable to expect Zuni people to let down the barriers which have protected them for over four hundred years from foreign intrusion. They need to protect their unique way of life. Their success in this venture depends in part upon their ability to be competent in two cultures—Zuni and Anglo. This probably does not mean simply switching from one culture to another the way a bilingual person switches languages. Harris (1978, p. 1) defines bicultural people as those who have "the ability to shift into and operate in two cultures with relative ease and comfort." Rather, it means individuals becoming what I will call fused bicultural people, i.e., people who have a "newly forged sensibility of irreconcilable values" (Highwater, 1982, ix).

Kleinfeld (1979) uses the term "a fused curriculum" to mean a curriculum which draws upon common elements of Inuit and Catholic cultures. Upon these selected common elements—cooperation and caring for each other—a whole gamut of curricular objectives were built. For example, the purpose for education at the boarding school became the development of skills which would be useful to both the Inuit students as they returned to their villages, and to the welfare of their villages. One of the skills fostered, a skill which was not traditionally held in high regard by the Inuits for their children, was the skill of speaking out in public settings. The public speaking skills developed in the high school were one of the key distinguishing characteristics of these Inuit students among all Inuit students at universities. Furthermore, the students were well received as they returned to their home villages, because they now had skills which were useful to the village in its dealings with the Anglo world. Put another way, some non-traditional behaviors were taught to the Inuit students for reasons which linked tradition to the present village needs and the philosophy of their Anglo-introduced schools. The common element here was caring for others—a traditional Inuit value and a cornerstone of the Catholic school under study.

An end-product of such an education would be educational duplexity according to Native American natural scientist, Highwater (1982, xi). He says:

Two people interviewed in the present study alluded to similar solutions to the way Zuni and Anglo cultures can share in the education of Zuni children. J.J. argued for a "balanced" education to help "children bridge the gap" and "help them not to mix the two" (see p. 5). One School Board member said: "It would be a great accomplishment to draw a bridge across two cultures" (Osborne, 1983, p. 179). For the bridge to be built, for the balance to be struck, it is imperative that common elements between the two cultures be identified; that these common elements become the conceptual foundation for curriculum; that teaching strategies be used that are initially culturally congruent; and that as Anglo culture is increasingly introduced into the classrooms the cultural assumptions underpinning behavior in each classroom are made explicit to the students. If these four conditions are not met, at best the bridge will be rickety, the balance shaky, and only a few students will stumble upon educational duplexity to become fused bicultural people.

The phenomenon of teachers not availing themselves of opportunities to develop a second cultural window occurs in other settings. For example, during 1985 and 1986 I collected data, by ethnographic interview, nonparticipant observation and videotape, from seven teachers during their first thirteen months teaching in a high school in Torres Strait. Of the seven, preliminary analyses show that only two made regular contact with the Islanders outside of school hours. One did this by playing sport in one of their teams; the other did it through church attendance, attending feasts, visiting the homes of the Islanders and inviting them to his home. Accordingly, apart from this one man, these new teachers in their final interview (see Note 8) were unable to say what they had learned about Islander lifestyles, culture, or heritage during the year. None of them had even sought such information from books despite the availability of such information in the school library.

Many factors seemed to result in this inability to develop "a second cultural window." One was that the teachers were highly committed to teaching and attended many in-service workshops, which, while relevant to teaching both culturally different children and second language learners, did not present information about Torres Strait lifestyles, culture, or heritage. Hence, these workshops did not directly facilitate the development of "second cultural windows." At the same time, the workshops also reduced time and hence opportunities to mix socially with Islanders.

A second factor seemed to relate to the Torres Strait’s idyllic conditions for people who enjoy life outdoors. Excellent, year-round fishing, camping, scuba diving, sailing, boating, and hiking facilities led many of the young teachers to spend much of their weekend and after school time together with other teachers enjoying such activities. This provided a respite from the demands of teaching but it also reduced time and opportunity for social interactions with Islanders, listening to their views of the world and so developing "second cultural windows."

A third factor seemed to be related to values. Like me, when I taught at Thursday Island, the teachers largely seemed unaware of the importance of the culture and heritage of the Islanders they were teaching. Accordingly, little effort was expended in gaining insights which were seen to be only peripherally related to teaching.

A fourth factor may be that sometimes cultural knowledge is withheld from an outsider for a variety of reasons (Osborne, 1986) and rather than face further rebuff the outsider seeks no further information. For whatever reasons teachers fail to gain information about their "host" culture, the net result is inability to build bridges between cultures.

Nevertheless, Kleinfeld (1979) has shown that a school can produce a fused curriculum. Highwater (1982), J.J., and Tania show that Native Americans can succeed academically and still identify with their ethnic groups. If the teachers on Thursday Island could mix more with the Islanders and learn more of their ways, then perhaps a fused curriculum would be a possibility, as second culture windows were opened. Hopefully, then, even more students would succeed at school and become fused bicultural people.

Two issues were raised in this paper. The first has to do with ethnicity and the second with fused biculturalism. It is frequently argued that members of specific ethnic groups are better placed than others to provide learning experiences that match the backgrounds of students from those ethnic groups (for example in Australia, National Aboriginal Education Committee, 1985, pp. 4-5 and p. 24; Torres Strait Islander Regional Education Committee, 1985, pp. 7-9). The findings of the current study support such a position, but with qualification. Thus, while J.J. was well versed in Zuni custom and a proficient speaker of the language, Tania was not. She learned the custom and the language but was reticent to use it because of her accent and had not developed sufficient skill in the language to be able to use it to teach concepts. Nevertheless, she approved of bilingual-bicultural education, unlike teachers from other ethnic groups which other studies have shown support neither (Silberman, 1984; Fitzgerald, 1974). It is thus possible to envisage a range of teachers from a supportive competent bicultural, to a supportive but less than fully competent bicultural who becomes more bicultural, to assimilationist, monocultural teachers all from the one ethnic group. Hence, ethnicity, in and of itself, does not ensure that teachers will match learning experiences to those of students from their own ethnic group. They may do so, they may want to, but lack expertise; or, they may have chosen assimilation as a more appropriate approach.

The above argument is built on a preference for culturally congruent teaching. This paper also builds a case for fused biculturalism as the end product of such teaching. Fused biculturalism is a notion which needs closer scrutiny. Is a fused bicultural curriculum the optimnal curriculum for small scale ethnic minority groups which still live on their homelands--like the Zunis living at Zuni and Torres Strait Islanders living on the outer islands? Can other schools, as did the one described by Kleinfeld (1979), produce fused bicultural curricula? If they can, will such curricula foster the development of "fused bicultural people" rather than people who "stumble into" a reconciliation of the irreconcilable values of home and school? Issues such as these require further research and, as I have argued elsewhere Osborne 1987), the best people to conduct such research will come from ethnic minorities like the Zunis and Torres Strait Islanders.

For the present, it is possible to speculate to a limited extent about the implications which derive from the current findings. Such implications apply to the Zuni context as it was in 1983 or to the Torres Strait context of 1985-88. Readers may be able to generalize beyond these contexts by relating the findings to substantially similar settings.

First, those wanting to recruit teachers who will teach in culturally congruent ways (like the Zuni School Board of the Peninsula Regional Office of the Department of Education) would be well advised to consider more than just competence and ethnicity as they appoint teachers. The present study indicates that both familiarity with local custom and existing language proficiency should be considered as well.

Second, those who develop curriculum could examine their curricula in terms of irreconcilable values in an attempt to find ways of creating fused bicultural curricula.

Third, mainstream teachers who want to deliver culturally congruent curriculum should be willing to spend considerable time in the local community learning about the culture. This implies learning from the local community/teachers; but my experience suggests that it often does not occur. Sometimes mainstream teachers do not seek to learn; sometimes they seek to learn but information is withheld from them (Osborne, 1986); and, of course, sometimes they do learn like Lee and Annette, but it takes time. Teachers from ethnic minorities could be encouraged to examine how they reconciled the irreconcilable values of home and school and share the dilemmas and their resolutions not only with mainstream teachers but also with their students to foster fused biculturalism among them.

Fourth, teacher educators need to provide mainstream pre-service teachers with experiences which prepare them to develop "second cultural windows" when they arrive in remote communities with students who are ethnically different from themselves. Such preparation also needs appropriate inservice support from members of the local community so that locally appropriate curricula can be delivered in culturally sensitive ways. The teacher educators’ tasks with ethnically different students is difficult, too. They need to encourage such students to maintain and even develop their own languages and customs rather than to simply "make them over" to use J.J.’s term. Once again the best people to deliver such preparation will be fused bicultural people from the particular ethnic minority--Zunis or Torres Strait Islanders.

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