Administrator revises rules for diversity programs

Despite 30 years of diversity programs and affirmative action, a disturbing gap persists between the academic achievements of minority and majority students on all educational levels.

Robert A. Ibarra, assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs, says differences in thinking strategies that members of various ethnic groups typically employ may be fueling achievement-score disparities.

“The problem is with the educational system, not the people in it,” he says. “There’s a pronounced discrepancy between the way our educational system assumes people think, and the ways in which many African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans and Latinos actually do think. Educational institutions are not set up to handle the differences.”

Ibarra makes this case in his forthcoming book, “Beyond Affirmative Action: Reframing the Context of Higher Education” (University of Wisconsin Press, February 2001). Drawing upon 15 years of research into the culture of higher education, he has formulated a completely new take on diversity issues. Ibarra promises his conclusions have the potential to revolutionize not only higher education but K-12 instruction and the corporate world.

The current situation has its roots in the middle of the 19th century, when many American colleges and universities were founded.

“Most looked to the German research model of higher education, which relies upon linear, analytical, step-by-step thinking; intellectual specialization in undergraduate majors; and knowledge easily measured through standardized exams and exercises,” among other characteristics, he says.

Anthropologists call this style of information processing “low-context” culture. In contrast, many minority members, women and some majority males prefer a “high-context” approach to studying, teaching and working. For example, high-context learning is people- rather than idea-oriented. It relies heavily on interaction between students, their families and teachers. Consequently, high-context learners may be unprepared for the social isolation that often accompanies structured learning, with its emphasis on individual rather than group comprehension, Ibarra says.

“High-context students usually can come to terms with the low-context system, but their academic achievements often fall below their potential. Learning to function within a low-context system is like learning to write with your right hand if you’re left-handed: It’s never entirely comfortable or natural. Minorities often have to be academically ambidextrous in order to function successfully in an educational setting,” he says.

Ibarra uses the term “multicontextual” to describe the way minorities negotiate the mainstream classroom or workplace. “It’s not ‘multiculturalism,’ which exposes people to bits and pieces of each others’ cultures,” he says. “We need to go beyond those tentative explorations. A truly multicontextual system would accommodate both high- and low-context styles into the fabric of our academic culture.”

And that will present quite a challenge, Ibarra concedes. In addition to preferring interactive learning situations, high-context people may be more comfortable working concepts out in their minds rather than on paper or at a computer screen. High-context thinkers also value accuracy and thorough understanding, even at the expense of the deadlines that low-context systems prize.

The prevailing low-context pedagogical norm is a fine model of education in many respects, Ibarra notes. “We certainly shouldn’t abandon it altogether. However, we do need to expand it to include the intellectual style of high-context students and faculty,” he says. Toward that end, he suggests educators consider:

• Using real-life problems to give high-context students, faculty and staff the hands-on experience that often helps them learn and teach more effectively. Ibarra says service learning, in which students offer their time and talents in the community, is a particularly useful way to flesh out the abstract theory presented in lectures.
• Offering opportunities for the general-to-specific deductive reasoning that high-context people often favor, rather than relying exclusively on inductive reasoning, which moves from the specific to the general.
• Making greater use of nonverbal communication – facial expression, gestures, eye contact – to impart information.
• Providing opportunities for interactive study and collaborative research for those who want them. At UW–Madison, for example, Wisconsin Emerging Scholars each year helps about 150 students, especially minority, women or people from rural areas, navigate the demanding mathematical terrain of calculus. Participants work in small groups to solve problems. University data consistently show higher grade points on average for WES students than for those who learn calculus the traditional way.

Similarly, UW–Madison’s 2-year-old PEOPLE program, which offers pre-college enrichment for middle- and high-school students in Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha, Beloit and Madison, goes to great lengths to involve entire communities in acquainting families with the benefits of a college degree from UW–Madison. Faculty and staff on campus can take advantage of the Creating a Collaborative Academic Environment office to explore cross-disciplinary learning, teaching and research possibilities.

John Wiley, UW–Madison provost, agrees with Ibarra that education needs to go beyond affirmative action. “When affirmative action was first implemented in the early 1960s, its goal was to remove barriers that had limited or barred access to higher education. The continuing focus on these goals, however, has hidden the fact that the culture of higher education can present its own barriers to participation. This book is a breakthrough because it shows for the first time why and how cultural context helps or impedes a person’s success within the system.”

In the end, educational success is determined by both the individual’s ability to function in a culture and that culture’s willingness to provide opportunities for all, Ibarra says.

“My first career was as a drummer, and at that time, drum kits usually were set up for right-handed people,” Ibarra says. “It wasn’t until the last decade or so drums have been set up for ambidextrous playing, and now drummers using that setup can coax more complex and interesting rhythms out of the instrument.

“I think education needs to do develop its own ambidextrous system so we can look more fully at life in all its dimensions,” he says.

Ibarra has just finished outlining his findings at one of the prestigious Gordon Research Conferences on new frontiers in science and technology policy. Later this fall he will discuss his ideas for diversity before conferences in the Washington, D.C., area, and in Albuquerque, N.M., and San Francisco.

“This country faces a profound demographic change, with the potential for many more high-context people in the educational system,” he says. “So far we have not yet been able to come to grips with that. We need to understand what the real barriers to education are and come up with creative new ways to address them.”