Impact of Cultural Literacy on Academic Success

Impact of Cultural Literacy on Academic Success

Introduction

Cultural literacy is the ability of an individual to understand and participate in the practices of a given community. The cultural background of students affects how students see the world and process information.  Students from countries with extreme cultural beliefs do not perform well in international examinations. Recent research on the subject has shown that most of the students who migrate from their home countries to undertake their studies in different countries do not perform very well because of cultural changes. In the United States, the rapid growth of English Language Learners has resulted in a cultural clash that has led the attitude of teachers towards those students to change. Arguments say that the culture of the English Language Learners makes their teachers develop a negative attitude towards the students (Mellom,2018). Cultural literacy can have either a positive or negative attitude to the academic success of the students. Some students have been brought up in the environment of education, and this culture of education causes them to achieve academic success. Some other students have been brought have in cultures, which do not embrace education and therefore, their upbringing has a negative impact on their academic performance. Therefore, there is a purpose of studying the impact of culture in the academic performance of students.  The paper discusses the past studies about the impact of culture on academic performance, then captures the necessary information and findings on the impact of culture on academic success. Knowledge is very critical in the development of any community; concerning that, this paper discusses how upbringing of children can affect their academic performance in schools. The primary objective of this research is to establish whether culture has an impact on the academic performance of the students. In the research, students with different culture afflictions were the participants because when students experience academic or behavioral difficulties, examining their learning experiences from an ecological perspective provides a much broader understanding of the relationship between culture, learning and academic performance.

Literature Review.

The leadership of any learning institution and how the institution delivers its services defines the culture of that particular institution. A study was carried out to determine how different patterns of the leadership of an institution affects academic success of the students (Malloy,2017). The study revealed that planful alignment had a positive impact on student’s achievement in mathematics subject. Some communities have cultures, which do not give the female gender the opportunity to carry out with education. The gender bias culture harms the academic performance of the girl child. A research was carried out to determine the impact of gender-biased culture on the academic performance of the female students. The study involved 92 departments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Carne,2015). Experimental departments were offered a gender bias habit. Control departments were also used to measure the relevance of the data collected. The research established that gender-biases affected academics of female students and recommended changes to be made on the faculty departments to support the career advancement of women in academia.Family socialization practices and the way of upbringing children have a significant influence on the academic success of the children. A study was carried out based on theories and of internalization and socialization practices of Asian and White Americans (Asakawa,2017). The results indicated that Asian Americans were influenced by their cultural values relevant to education and academic success. The study also revealed that parent’s attitudes had stronger effects on adolescents’ school performance. Differences in family socialization practices between Asian and White Americans were reflected in the academic performance of the students.

Data Collection Methods

The participants involved in collecting the necessary data were parents, students, and school teachers. Schools performance reports were also critical in acquiring the required data. To understand the impact of culture on academic performance, a questioner was sent to ten primary school teachers to answer whether cultural practices affect the academic success of the students. The performance of twenty-two students who had come to the same school from different countries was also inspected. Ten of the students were boys, and the other twelve students were girls aging between 13-16 years. Twenty students of the home country were used as the control group where their academic performance was compared to the academic performance of the immigrant students. The students from different countries were used in this process of collecting data because the primary objective was to establish whether different cultures have an impact on the academic success of the students. The performance of students who had two native parents was also included in the data collection. 15 Different families who had two native parents were interviewed on their views on the impact of culture on the academic performance of their children. The school that was used in this process of data collection had students from different countries with different cultures. The data was collected for a period of two weeks and prepared for the analysis.

Results and Analysis

The responses of 10 primary school teachers were collected, which revealed that eight teachers believed that culture and the way of children upbringing had a significant impact on the performance of the students. The eight teachers argued girl children who originated from communities whose cultural practices do not support the education of girls registered poor grades as compared to girl children who came from communities, which supported the education of the girl children. The other two teachers responded that cultural practices have no relationship on the intelligence of the students and therefore the performance of the students depends on their efforts towards academics. The performance tendency of the 22 students who had come from different countries showed that these group of children struggled in academics. The student had difficulties in coping with the different cultural environment from the cultures of their own countries. The ten students in the home country registered high grades as compared to the twenty-two immigrant students. The parents from different countries who were interviewed believed that culture had an impact on the academic performance of their children. The overall results showed that cultural practices and upbringing of children had significant effects on the academic performance of the children.

Discussion and Conclusion

Some traditional cultures make it difficult for students to interrelate between academics and cultural practices, suggesting that culture affects the academic performance of students. For the communities who do not support the education of their girl children, the girl students do not perform well in their academics because of lack of motivation and incentives to continue with their education. In countries where culture is focused on gender equality, both girls and boys have equal chances of excelling in academics. Immigrant students are subjected to different cultural practices, and in the process of adapting to the new culture, the students lose focus on their academics. Cultural background has a significant influence on the students’ school performance. We observe a substantial difference in performance for the students studying in their home country and the immigrant students. Achievement oriented culture improves academic performance while traditional values have a negative impact on the academic performance of the students. The analysis indicates that cultural practices and upbringing of children has a significant effect on the academic performance of the students.

References

Mellom, P. J., Straubhaar, R., Balderas, C., Ariail, M., & Portes, P. R. (2018). “They come with nothing:” How professional development in a culturally responsive pedagogy shapes teacher attitudes towards Latino/a English language learners. Teaching and Teacher Education, 71, 98-107.

Malloy, J., & Leithwood, K. (2017). Effects of distributed leadership on school academic press and student achievement. In How school leaders contribute to student success (pp. 69-91). Springer, Cham.

Carnes, M., Devine, P. G., Manwell, L. B., Byars-Winston, A., Fine, E., Ford, C. E., … & Palta, M. (2015). Effect of an intervention to break the gender bias habit for faculty at one institution: a cluster randomized, controlled trial. Academic medicine: journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, 90(2), 221.

Asakawa, K. (2017). Family socialization practices and their effects on the internalization of educational values for Asian and White American adolescents. In Conditions for Optimal Development in Adolescence (pp. 184-194). Psychology Press.