How can we measure the effectiveness of sociocultural interventions in the classroom and the impact of teachers influencing students to change their beliefs around normative behavior in the classroom?
Bartolome (1994) states that recent research studies have identified educational programs [that were] found to be successful in working with culturally and linguistically subordinated minority student populations (Carter & Chatfield 1986; Lucas Henze & Donato 1990; Tikunoff 1985; Webb 1987) and that there has been specific interest in identifying teaching strategies that more effectively teach culturally and linguistically 'different' students and other 'disadvantaged' and 'at-risk' students (Knapp & Shields 1990; McLeod in press; Means & Knapp 1991; Tinajero & Ada 1993).
Studies have found educators who can successfully employ students’ culturally valued language practices while introducing them to more conventional and academically acceptable ways of using language. This phenomenon is colloquially called code-switching. However there must be a way as Au and Mason (1983) state to achieve cultural congruence in lessons to seek a balance between the interactional rights of teachers and students so that the children can participate in ways comfortable to them while remaining conflict-free. Macedo (1993) in his call for an anti-methods pedagogy calls for a rejection of the mechanization of intellectualism [and a] challenge [to] teachers to work toward reappropriation of endangered dignity and toward reclaiming our humanity. Congruently Rydell McConnell & Beilock (2009) have found that helping people to think about themselves as having multiple identities in particular focusing on those facets of their identity that are in-group (e.g. college student) rather than out-group (e.g. female) improves performance for those at risk of stereotype threat.
Future studies can focus on the implications of stereotype threat in the context of classrooms that employ these teaching strategies with pre-intervention classrooms as a control group.