CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE INSTRUCTION

Focus on Exceptional Children

The field of education faces a number of issues regarding how to improve the quality of school life and educational outcomes of culturally different 1 students-namely African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and American Indians. All of the issues (high dropout rates, high suspension and expulsion rates, high rates of school failure, low test scores and grades, low academic engagement, poor student-teacher relationships, etc.) fall under the umbrella of three broad areas: the achievement gap, gifted education underrepresentation, and special education overrepresentation. Educators, administrators, and policy makers grapple daily with ways to resolve these issues and subissues but have yet to see much success on a large-scale and consistent basis. Many studies and theories, along with personal speculation, have been advanced to explain the differential school performance of the aforementioned culturally different students. Likewise, a number of interventions, strategies, and recommendations have been put forth. A strongly advocated recommendation, especially by culturally different scholars, is that educators avoid colorblind/cultureblind approaches and philosophies and, instead, give more credence to creating culturally responsive classrooms (CRCs) for the culturally different students listed above. MAY 2009 The term culturally responsive can have numerous meanings and interpretations. At its core, it means responding proactively and empathetically to appeals, efforts, and influences es. When we are responsive, we feel an obligation, a sense of urgency, to address a need so students will experience success. When teachers are culturally responsive, they are student centered; they break down barriers to learning and, hence, provide keys that open doors to students' success. Thus, to be culturally responsive means that teachers work proactively and assertively to understand, respect, and meet the needs of students from cultural backgrounds that are different from their own. Cultural responsiveness is the recognition that students are similar to, but also different from, each other. 1 In this article we adopt the term culturally different rather than culturally diverse. Everyone has a culture; every group is culturally diverse. Instead, we propose that cultural differences are what contribute to misunderstandings, tensions, and frustrations. Dr.

Preparing teachers for a changing world: contemporary issues in EFL Education, 2019

Preparing teachers for a changing world: Contemporary issues in EFL education, 2020

Comparative and International Education Society, 2019

Culture can serve as a way to enhance the motivation of learners because it can create culturally responsive teaching, which is characterized by respect for diversity; engagement of the motivation of all learners; creation of a safe, inclusive, and respectful learning environment (Krasnof, 2016). In a culturally responsive classroom, effective teaching and learning occur in a culturally supported, learner-centered context, whereby the strengths students bring to school are

TEACHING Exceptional Children, 2007

This qualitative theoretical study was conducted in response to the current need for an inclusive and comprehensive model to guide the preparation and assessment of teacher candidates for culturally responsive teaching. The process of developing a model of culturally responsive teaching involved three steps: a comprehensive review of the literature; a synthesis of the literature into thematic categories to capture the dispositions and behaviors of culturally responsive teaching; and the piloting of these thematic categories with teacher candidates to validate the usefulness of the categories and to generate specific exemplars of behavior to represent each category. The model of culturally responsive teaching contains five thematic categories: (1) content integration, (2) facilitating knowledge construction, (3) prejudice reduction, (4) social justice, and (5) academic development. The current model is a promising tool for comprehensively defining culturally responsive teaching in the context of teacher education as well as to guide curriculum and assessment changes aimed to increase candidates' culturally responsive knowledge and skills in science and mathematics teaching.

equityallianceatasu.org

In 2000, Professor Geneva Gay wrote that culturally responsive teaching connects students' cultural knowledge, prior experiences, and performance styles to academic knowledge and intellectual tools in ways that legitimize what students already know. By embracing the sociocultural realities and histories of students through what is taught and how, culturally responsive teachers negotiate classrooms cultures with their students that reflect the communities where students develop and grow. This is no small matter because it requires that teachers transcend their own cultural biases and preferences to establish and develop patterns for learning and communicating that engage and sustain student participation and achievement. Culturally Responsive Teaching Matters! Eq ui ty M at te rs: In Le ar ni ng , fo r Lif e. w w w. e q u i t y a l l i a n c e a t a s u. o r g by Eli za be th B. Ko zle sk i