Cultural congruence in classroom participation structures: Achieving a balance of rights∗

To facilitate academic learning by culturally different children, it may be important to determine how the rules governing participation in classroom lessons can be made more congruent with their background experiences. One means of achieving cultural congruence in lessons may be to seek a balance between the interactional rights of teacher and students, so that the children can participate in ways comfortable for them. A comparison was made between interactional rules in the lessons of two teachers—one who was expected to teach in a culturally congruent way and one who was not—working with the same group of young Hawaiian students. Control over the topic of discussion was maintained only by the teacher who used culturally congruent interactional patterns. The lessons of the other teacher were frequently sidetracked because of conflicts over interactional rules.