Abstract
The global diverse society necessitates that teachers develop cultural competency and use authentic resources for teaching. This article presents classroom-tested materials for teaching elementary students about aspects of Russian culture, developed by a native Russian and two education professors. Multiage, multi-racial American Midwestern students from a homeschooling cooperative learned vocabulary and concepts with statistically significant increases from pretest to posttest and a large effect size. The lessons began with recognition of human commonalities between Russian people and Americans, in accordance with omniculturalism theory. Lessons then highlighted and celebrated cultural differences through an exploration of Russian literature and culture. Culminating creative craft-making activities included simulating a Gzhel porcelain statue in white air-dry clay with blue markings, making a pop-up version of a matryoshka nesting doll set, constructing a papier-mache building with onion-domed towers and a Maslenitsa holiday scene, and decorating a paper-covered plastic egg with gems to make a Faberge-style jewelry box. The lessons, greeted with enthusiasm from students, included classification tasks, observation activities, and a Bingo-type game. Students evidenced deeper learning by continuing to connect their lives to Russian cultural content after the lesson unit had concluded.
Highlights
The global diverse society requires that teachers adopt and present a multicultural perspective of the world.How to cite this paper: Zhbanova, K
Children across the world play with toys; Russians have a unique nesting doll toy called a matryoshka that was designed in 1890, based upon some Japanese nesting figures combined with the Russian concept of nesting eggs
The images we used in this game were: a balalajka; garmon’; a straw Maslenitsa doll; gusli; bliny; a samovar; a platok; lapti; valenki; a pillow fight scene between people sitting on a wood beam; kokoshnik; a horse-drawn sleigh-ride scene; a pole climbing scene in which climbers reach for prizes tied to the top of the pole; onion domes of buildings; Gzhel pottery; and a matryoshka doll set
Summary
The global diverse society requires that teachers adopt and present a multicultural perspective of the world. 306) states, “The end result of omniculturalism is a society in which people are knowledgeable about, and give priority to, human commonalities, and leave room for the recognition and further development of group distinctiveness.” These ideas of omniculturalism were applied to the current curriculum project through first making connections between the similar behaviors and values of Russian people and Americans, and highlighting and celebrating cultural differences. The first phase of the learning cycle allowed students to explore, self-question, and wonder about the lesson topic while the teacher activated their prior knowledge and determined their current understandings It was during this phase that connections were made between human behaviors of Russians and Americans, supporting the first stage of omniculturalism (Moghaddam, 2012). Craft-work across the lifespan has been shown to support spatial reasoning and success in science-related careers (Root-Bernstein & Root-Bernstein, 2013)
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