| The purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate how two successful teachers of secondary Spanish, who are committed to teaching about culture, actually taught culture. In this study, 'culture' was described from a postmodern perspective that seeks to understand contemporary global events and how these events affect Spanish speakers. Culture-general goals for overcoming ethnocentrism and being able to make cross-cultural comparisons were at the core of this view. The traditional notions of formal culture (literature, music, and art) and everyday culture (customs, values, and beliefs) were subsumed under this description.; Data were collected for each participant over six months. The data sources included observation notes, interview transcripts, the researcher's journal, and document analysis of vocabulary lists, quizzes, rubrics for culture-related presentations, adaptations of short stories, and culture-information handouts.; Data were analyzed by Banks' (2003) four levels of integration of multicultural content, as adapted for the foreign language classroom: the contributions, additive, transformation, and social action approaches. These approaches also aided with investigating the teachers' use of local, state, and national standards; their resources and materials for teaching cultures; their pedagogies of cultural and linguistic content; and their perceptions of the cultural content their students were learning.; A major finding of the study was that the participants taught primarily through the transformative and additive approaches with respect to culture-specific topics such as Hispanic holidays and culture-general topics such as stereotyping. Although they were not familiar with national, state, or local guidelines, their teaching aligned closely with district goals. Another finding was that the participants primarily used literature and movies to teach about culture. Also of note was the finding that the linguistic and cultural pedagogies of the participants differed, in that the first participant planned her lessons around culture learning, while the second planned for grammar learning. Both participants perceived their students to prefer learning culture-general rather than culture-specific material in their Spanish classes. Neither participant assessed cultural knowledge beyond objective facts.; The findings suggest that there is a need to focus on three important areas during pre-service training: coursework to develop nuanced understandings of Hispanic cultures; study or live abroad requirements; and, incorporation of Banks' modified approaches as a framework for examining and implementing cultural content and pedagogy. The findings further suggest a need to emphasize two important domains during teacher in-service work: familiarity with and the use of the national standards as a guide for creating curricula and integrating multicultural content into lessons, as well as for the development and synthesis of alternative resources for teaching culture.; The findings also suggest additional areas for future research: development of more sophisticated lessons using transformative and social action approaches; exploration of alternative and authentic means of assessment of cultural knowledge; and native versus nonnative Spanish-speaking teachers' comfort with and knowledge of Hispanic cultures. |
