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Cultural Proficiency
A Manual for School Leaders
RANDALL B. LINDSEY, KIKANZA NURI ROBINS & RAYMOND D. TERRELL
Corwin Press
17.99
0 8039 6763 2
The authors, all distinguished American professors, describe cultural proficiency as 'the optimum point on a continuum ... at which educators and the school environment facilitate effective cross-cultural interaction' (30). The continuum begins at cultural destructiveness and extends through cultural incapacity, cultural blindness, cultural pre-competence through cultural competence to cultural proficiency. The academics are unequivocal in stating that for a school to succeed with all its students, the point on the optimum that the educator has to be is at the right hand extreme of the continuum. However, they soften their line when they state that the culturally proficient do not claim to be omniscient about the subject; rather, they know 'how to learn about cultures and respond effectively to specific groups and situations'.
While the book was designed for US educators, it could...