Culturally Responsive Teaching
Edited by Cheryl Outing
Whether you are a teacher at a school in which the student body is reflective of the racially diverse New York City's public-school population or not, educators have a growing responsibility to teach children important interpersonal and conflict resolution skills.*
Culturally responsive teaching is defined as "using the cultural characteristics, experiences, and perspectives of ethnically diverse students as conduits for teaching them more effectively."
The Five Essential Elements:
This teaching philosophy is based on the assumption that by relating academic knowledge and skills to students' home lives; situating problems in the contexts of their real lives; and referencing their own cultural and experiential filters, academics are more personally meaningful students, they are more motivated to learn and participate, and a safe, open learning environment is established.
Culture encompasses so many aspects that influence a person's behaviors, values, expectations, preferences, and learning styles. Teachers need to know
Some Components of the Internal Structure of Ethnic Learning Styles:
Practical implementations in and out of the class room:
Common Mistakes:
Culturally responsive teaching is defined as "using the cultural characteristics, experiences, and perspectives of ethnically diverse students as conduits for teaching them more effectively."
The Five Essential Elements:
- Developing a knowledge base about cultural diversity
- Including ethnic and cultural diversity content in the curriculum
- Demonstrating caring and building learning communities
- Communicating with ethnically diverse students
- Responding to ethnic diversity in the delivery of instruction
This teaching philosophy is based on the assumption that by relating academic knowledge and skills to students' home lives; situating problems in the contexts of their real lives; and referencing their own cultural and experiential filters, academics are more personally meaningful students, they are more motivated to learn and participate, and a safe, open learning environment is established.
Culture encompasses so many aspects that influence a person's behaviors, values, expectations, preferences, and learning styles. Teachers need to know
- which ethnic groups give priority to collaborative learning
- different ethnic groups' protocols for appropriate child-adult interactions
- implications of gender role socialization in different ethnic groups
- communication styles of different ethnic groups
Some Components of the Internal Structure of Ethnic Learning Styles:
- preferred content
- ways of working through learning tasks
- techniques for organizing and conveying ideas and thoughts
- physical and social settings for task performance
- structural arrangement of work, study, and performance space
- perceptual stimulation for receiving, processing, and demonstrating comprehension and competence
- motivations, incentives, and rewards for learning
- interpersonal interactional styles
Practical implementations in and out of the class room:
- Formal - standards given by policy and governing bodies of the educational systems, supplemented by culturally responsive teachers conducting analyses to do instructional justice to the complexity, vitality, and potentiality of ethnic and cultural diversity.
- Symbolic Curriculum - bulletin board decorations, icons, images, and mottoes used to teach students knowledge and skills, and publicly displayed statements of social etiquette or rules and regulations to reinforce morals and values.
- Societal Curriculum - knowledge, idea,s and impressions about ethnic groups that are portrayed in the mass media (which is frequently prejudicial). Culturally responsive teachers include thorough and critical analyses of the ethnic distortions in mass media.
- Demonstrate culturally sensitive caring to build open, accepting learning communities through cultural scaffolding. This is the use of teachers' own cultures and experiences to expand their intellectual horizons and academic achievement.
- Holistic or integrated learning - resist the tendency to make different types of learning (emotional, physical, moral) discrete and deal with them simultaneously.
Common Mistakes:
- avoiding controversial issues such as racism, historical atrocities, powerlessness, and hegemony
- focusing on the accomplishments of the same few high-profile individuals repeatedly and ignoring the actions of groups
- giving proportionally more attention to African Americans than other groups of color
- decontextualizing women, their issues, and their actions from their race and ethnicity
- ignoring poverty
- emphasizing factual information while minimizing other kinds of knowledge (e.g. values, attitudes, experiences, ethics, etc.)
Gay, G. (2002). Preparing for Culturally Responsive Teaching. Journal of Teacher Education 53.2: 106-116.
*Even if your school isn't particularly racially diverse, do consider the cultural diversity that exists in the school. Culturally responsive teaching with discussions about ethnic distortions can be especially important with student bodies that don't necessarily have experience with other races and/or have been superficially lumped together as a homogenous group.
Consider reading about the issues of segregation prevalent in NY City schools in A Portrait of Segregation in NY City Schools, NY Times
Consider reading about the issues of segregation prevalent in NY City schools in A Portrait of Segregation in NY City Schools, NY Times