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Culturally responsive teaching is something that’s really important because it’s really a way to connect with students and it’s also a way to support students’ academic achievement. And a lot of times it’s left out of the learning framework that we currently have. And so one of the reasons that we want to really understand what cultural responsiveness means is because it can mean different things to different people.
Again, depending on the continuum, if you just started learning about cultural responsiveness, or you’ve been doing this for 20 years, it can mean different things to different people. In my world, because I’m a psychologist, what culturally responsive teaching is to me is a prescriptive method to decrease attributes like acculturative stress. Or the by-products of things like racism and prejudice.
And so we really want to make sure we’re focusing in on culturally responsive teaching. I’d also like to give an example about what it’s not. It’s not bias, it’s not othering, and it’s not grouping people together and teaching them because they are a certain ethnicity or race. But what it is is saying, I understand that no matter who I am and where I come from, that my ethnic lens is not the same as the people who may be in front of me.
And so I need alternative strategies to reach the people in front of me. And lastly, culturally responsive teaching is understanding the ethnic attributes and infusing them into parts of your course, like teaching, planning, course design and assignment feedback.
According to the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCREST), “cultural responsiveness is the ability to learn from and relate respectfully with people of your own culture as well as those from other cultures.”
The center also highlights a number of important principles we should bear in mind when developing and sustaining a culturally responsive learning environment:
- Instructor leadership and intentionality are key to culturally responsive teaching.
- Culturally responsive teaching is NOT teaching a group of students differently because of their ethnicity, race, or culture, unless specifically requested by specific group member(s). Culturally responsive teaching is not “Othering.”
- Culturally responsive teaching IS infusing various attributes of ethnic cultures into a teaching, assignment feedback, planning, and course design to allow all students to have the best opportunity to think, socialise, and learn.
- Culturally responsive teaching involves reviewing curriculum for various voices and historical considerations and perspectives and their influence on cognition.
- Culturally responsive teaching is NOT adopting or commandeering another cultural lens.
- Culturally responsive teaching requires specific knowledge about ethnicity and learning psychology and teaching effectiveness associated with various cultural norms.
- Effective culturally responsive teaching requires the application of specific aspects of ethnic cultures that influence learning outcomes.
Reference:
The Latino Family Literacy Project (2008). What Does It Mean to be Culturally Responsive? [Online].
Discussions
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