Bridging Cultures Between Home and School: A Guide for Teachers is intended to stimulate broad thinking about how to meet the challenges of education in a pluralistic society. It is a powerful resource for in-service and preservice multicultural education and professional development. The Guide presents a framework for understanding differences and conflicts that arise in situations where school culture is more individualistic than the value system of the home. It shares what researchers and teachers of the Bridging Cultures Project have learned from the experimentation of teacher-researchers in their own classrooms of largely immigrant Latino students and explores other research on promoting improved home-school relationships across cultures. The framework leads to specific suggestions for supporting teachers to cross-cultural communication; organization parent-teacher conferences that work; use strategies that increase parent involvement in schooling; increase their skills as researchers; and employ ethnographic techniques to learn about home cultures. Although the research underlying the Bridging Cultures Project and this Guide focuses on immigrant Latino families, since this is the primary population with which the framework was originally used, it is a potent tool for learning about other cultures as well because many face similar discrepancies between their own more collectivistic approaches to childrearing and schooling and the more individualistic approach of the dominant culture.

"Bridging Cultures in Early Care and Education: A Training Module" is a resource designed to help pre-service and in-service early childhood educators, including infant-toddler caregivers, understand the role of culture in their programs. It is also intended for professionals who work with children and their families in a variety of other roles, such as social workers, special educators, and early interventionists, and for use in college courses focused on early childhood education and child development.
The module explains and illustrates how early childhood educators can use the organizing concepts of "individualism" and "collectivism" as a means of understanding cultural conflict and difference. These concepts have been shown to be highly useful in improving home-school understanding across cultures. Based on real-life examples of cultural dilemmas in early care and education settings, participants engage the concepts of individualism and collectivism to solve a variety of scenarios in a dynamic and engaging manner.
*Chapter 1 introduces the Bridging Cultures for Early Care and Education approach, provides a brief history, and explains the training module. It presents the conceptual framework of individualism and collectivism, which is at the heart of the training.
*Chapter 2 provides the information needed for a two-hour workshop, including a script and notes to the facilitator. The script is not meant to be read word for word. Rather, it is offered as a guide, based on a pilot-tested approach. Appendices at the end of the book contain transparency masters for the overheads referenced in the script, and masters for suggested handouts.
*Chapter 3 offers ideas foraugmenting the basic two-hour training by expanding it over a longer time period. It also identifies additional diversity resources that can complement the Bridging Cultures training.
*Appendices providing additional information, data, and bibliographic resources are included.
This module originated as part of the Bridging Cultures Project at WestEd--a nonprofit research, development, and service agency working with education and other communities to promote excellence, achieve equity, and improve learning for children, youth, and adults.

Bridging Cultures: Teacher Education Module is a professional development resource for teacher educators and staff developers to help preservice and in-service teachers become knowledgeable about cultural differences and understand ways of bridging the expectations of school settings with those of the home. In a nonthreatening, cognitively meaningful way, the Module is based on teacher-constructed and tested strategies to improve home-school communication and parent involvement. These innovations were developed as part of the Bridging Cultures Project, which explores the cultural value differences between the individualistic orientation of mainstream U.S. schools and the collectivistic orientation of many immigrant families. The goal of the Bridging Cultures Project is to support and help teachers in their work with students and families from immigrant cultures. The centerpiece of the Module is training resources, including an outline, an agenda, and a well-tested three-hour script designed as a lecture-discussion with structured opportunities for guided dialogue and small-group discussion. Throughout the script, "Facilitators Notes" annotate presentation suggestions and oversized margins encourage integration of the facilitator's personal experiences in presenting and adapting the Module. Ideas for using the Readings for Bridging Cultures are provided. A section of overhead transparencies and handout masters is included. The Module also provides a discussion of the role of culture in education and the constructs of individualism and collectivism, an overview of the effects of the Bridging Cultures Project, and evaluation results of the author's use of the Module in two sections of a preservice teacher education course. Bridging Cultures: Teacher Education Module brings the successful processes and practices of the Bridging Cultures Project to a larger audience in college courses and in professional development arenas. Designed for use in one or two class sessions, the Module can be incorporated in courses on educational psychology, child development, counseling psychology, and any others that deal with culture in education.

Bridging Cultures in Early Care and Education: A Training Module is a resource designed to help pre-service and in-service early childhood educators, including infant-toddler caregivers, understand the role of culture in their programs. It is also intended for professionals who work with children and their families in a variety of other roles, such as social workers, special educators, and early interventionists, and for use in college courses focused on early childhood education and child development. The module explains and illustrates how early childhood educators can use the organizing concepts of individualism and collectivism as a means of understanding cultural conflict and difference. These concepts have been shown to be highly useful in improving home-school understanding across cultures. Based on real-life examples of cultural dilemmas in early care and education settings, participants engage the concepts of individualism and collectivism to solve a variety of scenarios in a dynamic and engaging manner. *Chapter 1 introduces the Bridging Cultures for Early Care and Education approach, provides a brief history, and explains the training module. It presents the conceptual framework of individualism and collectivism, which is at the heart of the training. *Chapter 2 provides the information needed for a two-hour workshop, including a script and notes to the facilitator. The script is not meant to be read word for word. Rather, it is offered as a guide, based on a pilot-tested approach. Appendices at the end of the book contain transparency masters for the overheads referenced in the script, and masters for suggested handouts. *Chapter 3 offers ideas for augmenting the basic two-hour training by expanding it over a longer time period. It also identifies additional diversity resources that can complement the Bridging Cultures training. *Appendices providing additional information, data, and bibliographic resources are included. This module originated as part of the Bridging Cultures Project at WestEd--a nonprofit research, development, and service agency working with education and other communities to promote excellence, achieve equity, and improve learning for children, youth, and adults.

Bridging Cultures Between Home and School: A Guide for Teachers is intended to stimulate broad thinking about how to meet the challenges of education in a pluralistic society. It is a powerful resource for in-service and preservice multicultural education and professional development. The Guide presents a framework for understanding differences and conflicts that arise in situations where school culture is more individualistic than the value system of the home. It shares what researchers and teachers of the Bridging Cultures Project have learned from the experimentation of teacher-researchers in their own classrooms of largely immigrant Latino students and explores other research on promoting improved home-school relationships across cultures. The framework leads to specific suggestions for supporting teachers to cross-cultural communication; organization parent-teacher conferences that work; use strategies that increase parent involvement in schooling; increase their skills as researchers; and employ ethnographic techniques to learn about home cultures. Although the research underlying the Bridging Cultures Project and this Guide focuses on immigrant Latino families, since this is the primary population with which the framework was originally used, it is a potent tool for learning about other cultures as well because many face similar discrepancies between their own more collectivistic approaches to childrearing and schooling and the more individualistic approach of the dominant culture.

How does the home culture of Latino immigrant students differ from the ""mainstream"" culture of U.S. schools? Why is it important for teachers to understand the differences? How can educators take advantage of students' cultural traits to improve classroom management, student performance, and school-parent relations? Carrie Rothstein-Fisch and Elise Trumbull answer these and many other questions by drawing on the experience and collective wisdom of teachers in the Bridging Cultures Project, a five-year action research study of elementary classrooms with high percentages of immigrant students. The authors present a simple framework for understanding cultural differences, comparing the ""individualistic"" culture that prevails in American education with the ""collectivistic"" culture that characterizes most of the world's population, including many of the Latino immigrant students in U.S. classrooms. At the heart of the book are teacher-developed strategies that capitalize on the cultural values that these students and their families offer, such as an emphasis on helping, sharing, and the success of the group. The strategies cover a wide spectrum of issues and concerns, including: Communication with families. Open house and parent-teacher conferences. Homework. Attendance. Learning in the content areas. Motivation and rewards. Classroom rules. Assessment and grading. Managing Diverse Classrooms: How to Build on Students' Cultural Strengths presents both the research foundation and the practical perspectives of seasoned teachers whose classroom-tested approaches have produced positive results. With this valuable guide in hand, readers will have the insights and strategies they need to turn educational challenges into educational opportunities.