Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

738 The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology
demonstrate precociousness. This cultural relationship or affinity strongly influences the way in
which teachers understand their students and their needs and so establish learning opportunities
as their own knowledge and values, the aspirations of parents and the needs and abilities of students
mediate their decision making, as do differing resource and policy structures. This results
in a form of curriculum selection, which commences in the early years of schooling building to
reinforce a differentiated curriculum and learning outcomes for students of different sociocultural
backgrounds as they progress through school.
The cultural affinity between the teachers, their students, and communities in the schools in
this study was found to be a significant influence on their decisions about curriculum, more so
than many other factors such as for example, quality of resources for teaching. Most teachers
share a strong cultural affinity with middle-class students and less so with students of poorer
communities. This translates to teacher behavior and decision making, which results in students in
some communities, notably the middle-class schools, being offered a more complex, challenging,
and intellectual curriculum.
Frequently it is assumed that working-class families are unable to engage fully in academic and
intellectual pursuits. Families and students from working-class communities are disadvantaged
as they try to access the high culture pursuits of tertiary education and the arts for example. Even
when families are able to interact with prestigious cultural activities, increased social mobility
is impeded unless the tools for access are developed. Equal numbers of teachers in working
class and middle-class schools participated in this study, and revealed their reasons for including
thinking skills as very different from each other, notably related to sociocultural issues.
Two trends were uncovered. In both the public and private schools in wealthier communities,
teachers felt pressured to extend and add value to the curriculum in order to preserve the image
and role of the school as catering to the intellectual needs of students and to support their academic
success. Teachers understood their students well because they lived in these communities and
often sent their children to the same or similar schools. A close alignment of cultural values
and standards was found between parents and teachers. This meant that the teachers’ actions,
often unconsciously, were supporting the existing enriched curriculum. Teachers and parents held
similar aspirations to students and the curriculum decisions endorsed these.
However, in poorer communities, teachers who implemented thinking skills programs did so
at some risk. While most schools worked with parents to change the curriculum, in some cases
there was concern about making these programs explicitly known to parents as anything which
was perceived as moving away from core skill development might be unsupported. Teachers
and parents’ expectations and knowledge about what was good teaching and curriculum were
not aligned and the teachers felt parents would not approve of some innovative practices such
as thinking skills programs. Most teachers in these communities argued that these differences
made change and innovation more difficult. While realising that the teaching of core skills was
essential, they also wanted to instil in their students an ability to inquire, think, challenge, and
solve problems so that they might engage in the world more fully, more democratically, and more
powerfully. These teachers were acting against what was expected by their communities, taking
conscious decisions to change what they were doing for improved learning.
The study of the teachers’ reasons for introducing certain curriculum, such as thinking skills
programs highlights the critical role of teacher cognition, beliefs, values, and attitudes and
the external factors which influence teacher actions in shaping the curriculum. Much has been
written about the role of society, schools, and teachers as powerful social structures and agents
in construction of an unjust social and educational experience for young people. As they respond
to government pressure and their own experience, teachers often unconsciously support the
continuation of the unequal class system many times because they feel they do not really have
the power to change or because this would mean extensive negotiation with the parents and