Responsive Learning Communities

Educating children from immigrant and ethnolinguistic group families is a major concern of our nation's classrooms. For many of these children, education is not a successful experience. While one-tenth of non-Hispanic White students leave school without a diploma, one-fourth of African-Americans, one-third of Hispanics, one half of Native-Americans, and two thirds of immigrant students drop out of school. This pattern of educational under achievement begins in the early grades .

Confronted with this dismal reality, administrators, teachers, parents and policy makers urge each other to do something different--change teaching methods, adopt new curricula, re-evaluate funding patterns. Such actions might be needed, but will not be meaningful unless we begin to think differently about these students. In order to educate them, we must first educate ourselves about who they are and what they need to succeed. Thinking differently involves viewing this diverse students body in new ways that may contradict conventional notions, and coming to a new set of comprehensive, integrated and responsive educational environments .

The express purpose of the proposed work by colleagues at the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley is to explore the direct link between these new responsive educational environments and local, state and federal educational policy in schools where the challenge of linguistic and cultural diversity exists.

Responsive Learning Communities Concept Paper (PDF FILE)

Responsive Learning Communties Researchers' Directory