Zhang, a professor of curriculum and education at the Graduate School of Education, said cultural misunderstandings can effect a child’s education very early on, particularly those with special needs.

“Many teachers don’t understand the student’s cultural background and too many parents don’t understand the mainstream expectations,” Zhang said from Macao, China, where she is on a Fulbright scholarship.

Through her research, Zhang attempts to understand the cultural and linguistic issues in providing early intervention and early childhood special education services. The book, which she co-edits with Carlos R. McCray, Ph.D. and Su-Je Cho, Ph.D, is called Using Positive Behavioral Supports for Promoting School Success from Early Childhood to High School for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students: Practice and Policies (Peter Lang, May 2013).

Compounded by language issues, Zhang said that American teachers lacking knowledge about the communities they serve often misdiagnose children as having learning disabilities and/or emotional disturbance, when the behavior in question actually springs from a cultural misunderstanding. Educators need to learn to become cultural translators or brokers in helping bridge the differences and gaps, she said.
Zhang seeks to bridge that gap between a family’s culture and the professional relationship with teachers. Various cultural differences often require distinct approaches. For example, understanding familismo, a Latino custom to involve extended family members in decision-making, should prompt teachers to reach out to grandparents, aunts, and uncles in addition to the parents.

Zhang has been weaving multicultural competencies into her research and teacher training that prepare early educators to address school readiness and challenging behaviors. She has secured funding from the U.S. Department of Education to address a chronic shortage of qualified early childhood special education teachers (ESCE). The funding will provide some 75 teachers with skills to identify students in need and intervene (or, perhaps more importantly, not to misdiagnose and mis-serve) on behalf of those children at risk (i.e., culturally diverse students, students in poverty).

The consequence of not having properly trained ESCE teachers, writes Zhang, is an underrepresentation of children in early intervention and an overrepresentation in special education, with lower expectations and outcomes for children with disabilities, especially for those from diverse backgrounds.

Zhang’s work in China expands on research that she began in the early 2000s and builds on her more recent U.S. research. She will be presenting a comparison of U.S. and Chinese perspectives on special education at the 8th Annual Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Hong Kong in early March.

In Macao, she is studying the implementation of groundbreaking programs in China. The country is just beginning to design inclusive services for young children with disabilities. Zhang and other scholars are exploring how U.S. methods might be implemented; once again, cultural differences come into focus, as the Chinese definition of disabilities differs greatly from that of the West.

“In the U.S. we include developmental delay, mild disability, learning disabilities, social, emotional, vision, and hearing disabilities,” said Zhang. “In China, it’s vision, hearing, and intellect.”

Compounding the problem, many Chinese families view a child with a disability as a source of shame—a notion that the Chinese government is trying to abate. Zhang said that Chinese celebrities have begun following the government agenda in order to push the issue to the forefront. But while certain laws are in place to provide the children with services, there’s little money behind them to give the laws teeth.

“It is mostly privately organized,” she said.

While Zhang and other scholars point to the various methods that have worked in the United States, she is careful to point out that that there are many things that haven’t worked. In particular she cites the layers of bureaucracy required to overly assess and monitor teachers and children—a cumbersome component that drains resources from developing and implementing new effective practices and programs.

Whether in the Bronx or Hong Kong, Zhang said she would like to see children with disabilities integrated into classes with the general population. She argues that it’s not just helpful to children with special needs, but it also teaches the rest of the children something more important than just the ABCs.

“Other children will learn so much from understanding and supporting kids who have special needs,” she said. “It’s a kind of soft character development. They become more nurturing and sensitive, [and]if they’re not in that kind of environment they don’t learn it.”

Indeed Zhang, who didn’t start her career researching special education, said the work has transformed her into “a more thoughtful and companionate person.”

“I read the issues, did the research, had contact with the families, and shared these issues and research with my students” she said. “I’ve probably become a better parent, educator, and person because of it.”

Fordham will be the only New York City university to teach this language of the Akan people, the largest single linguistic group in the country. The official language of Ghana, where hundreds of languages and dialects are spoken, is English.

The Bronx has the highest concentration of African immigrants in the United States, said Mark Naison, Ph.D., chair of the Department of African and African-American Studies at Fordham. There are about 36,000 Africans in the Bronx, as assessed by the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2005-2007 American Community Survey, a large percentage of whom are Ghanaian. There are also significant numbers of Nigerians, Malians, Guineans and Gambians.

That number is likely higher, according to Jane Kani Edward, Ph.D., director of African Immigration Research and a post-doctoral fellow at Fordham. She based that assessment on her team’s interviews with Bronx Africans in places such as mosques and churches, as well as at Fordham.

Ghanaians comprise a major portion of the labor force in health care, particularly nursing homes, Naison said. That fact, and the number of first-generation Ghanaian-American children enrolled in the public school system, contributed to the decision to teach the language at Fordham.

“Twi is for people wanting to teach, and for people working in health care, in the Bronx,” he said. “Teachers will be able to talk to their students’ parents and health care workers will be able to communicate with patients.”

The teaching of the language is one example of a greater prominence to be given to Africa at Fordham in the coming year. The African Cultural Exchange, a two dozen-strong student group led by Kojo Ampah, a junior at Fordham College at Rose Hill, plans to hold an African festival in February as one way to “bring Africa to the fore,” he said. Eventually, Ampah hopes that the cultural exchange will grow to become a resource for African issues.

Naison agreed.

“Fordham is a place where African culture and history is going to be discussed on a regular basis,” he said.

For further information on the course, contact Associate Dean Tara Czechowski, Ph.D., director of the Summer Session Office, at [email protected] or 718-817-4665.