Building a Better Understanding of Culturally Responsive Teaching

We often hear misconceptions about culturally responsive teaching and, like other topics in education, it has even become politicized.  If you can avoid the headlines and dive deeper into culturally responsive teaching, you’ll see that its focus is on furthering students’ academic knowledge and progress.  

Let’s start by addressing common questions about culturally responsive teaching.

FAQ #1: What is culturally responsive teaching?

Culturally-responsive teaching is:

• research-based
• student-centered
• asset-based (emphasizing student strengths)
• focused on supporting struggling students to become independent learners
• leveraging students’ cultural learning styles and tools to increase learning
• high expectations for all students 
• a way to close the achievement gap 

FAQ #2: What does culturally responsive teaching look like?

Culturally responsive teaching connects students’ lived experiences, culture, and language to curricular content.  Ideally, it should increase student success by emphasizing higher-order thinking over rote memorization. 

In other words, culturally responsive teaching creates an academic foundation based on individual frames of reference, bodies of existing knowledge, and communication styles.  The teacher then layers a challenging and rigorous curriculum upon that foundation.  There is a strong emphasis on setting high expectations for all students and engaging students in higher-order thinking.

FAQ #3: What are some misconceptions of culturally responsive teaching?

Culturally-responsive teaching is not:

• a strategy to engage racially and culturally diverse students
• a strategy to motivate racially and culturally diverse students
• a lowering of standards 
• only focused on celebrating holidays, traditions, or food

The focus on furthering academic progress, having high academic standards, and working toward closing the achievement gap is not always the narrative around culturally responsive teaching.  Rather, it is often seen as merely a superficial engagement tool to motivate struggling students by connecting lesson content to students’ racial backgrounds.  As mentioned above, that is not the intent of culturally responsive teaching.

FAQ #4: How can I, as a new teacher, get started with culturally responsive teaching?

Step 1: Identify your own personal frame of reference.

Take time to non-judgmentally examine your own beliefs and how those beliefs established themselves.  Think through your own cultural identity and the messages that you were taught.  The unconscious, unintentional attitudes that we hold impact how we interact with students and how the curriculum is planned and delivered.  Starting internally is the first step toward creating a more culturally responsive classroom.

Some reflection questions to help identify your frame of reference:

• How did your family identify–racially, ethnically, culturally?
• What is the story (or stories) that get told and retold in your family?  Why are they important to your family?  What values do they reveal?
• What is an important family tradition?  Why was it important to your family?
• How would you describe your family’s values around money and economic status?
• How would you describe your family’s values around education and school?
• What did your family or community teach you about what respectful behavior looked like?

Step 2: Establish relationships based on trust and rapport.

Establish connections with your students and, ideally, their families early and often. 

• Take the time to get to know your students as individuals. 
• Express curiosity about students’ activities, interests, and anything important to them 
• Identify and help students recognize within themselves their assets and then leverage those assets to help them have a positive academic mindset.  
• Additionally, make sure that you are pronouncing their name correctly, and don’t be afraid to ask when you are unsure.  

Step 3: Build lessons that establish high expectations for all students.

A key tenet of culturally responsive teaching is that teachers have high expectations for all students.  Yes, but how?  If you teach in a typical school, you likely have students struggling with basic skills or knowledge.

• Connect to prior knowledge/experiences. By connecting new knowledge to prior knowledge (either academic learning or real-world experiences) new knowledge attaches itself to older, established knowledge “sticking” the two together.
• Scaffolding.  Scaffolding, in a classroom context, provides the necessary support to allow students to achieve what normally would not be possible on their own. Scaffolding strategies include graphic organizers, chunking information, or providing vocabulary lists.
• Cognitive journaling. Cognitive journaling topics that allow students to think about their thinking is a way to help them process new information and move it to their long-term memory.  Sample questions include:
  • • What does this new material remind me of or how is it connected to what I already know?
    • How does this information fit into the larger unit/topic we are learning about?
    • What other information do we need to know/with this new information, what questions arise?

• Student talk time.  Student talk time is an important way of developing students’ ability to understand and analyze content.  
• Stories and games. Stories and games are a part of all cultures and incorporating them into lessons can help students process and retain information.  Using games or stories to either present information (games work best) or demonstrate understanding (stories work best) often engages students, allowing them a visual or written opportunity to learn new material or show what they have learned.

Step 4: Don’t stop at merely introducing multicultural resources.

Where applicable, the curriculum can be more culturally responsive in the books, movies, and stories discussed.  Some teachers stop here and it is important to note that being a culturally-responsive teacher does not end with including multicultural content.  As Zaretta Hammond writes: 

“[a]s important as including multicultural content is to making learning relevant, it alone doesn’t increase brainpower” (p. 123).  She shares about a math lesson that tries to superficially link math concepts to Egyptians in Africa or Aztecs in Mexico or the teacher trying to rap about a historical event as examples of educators mistakenly thinking they have now “done” cultural responsiveness.  

Beyond the curriculum itself, culturally responsive teachers help students learn how to learn by teaching them cognitive routines and increasing their positive academic mindset.  They connect content to culturally and socially relevant examples and provide students with opportunities to process content.

For a deeper dive into culturally responsive teaching:

Though important to have a foundation in how to implement culturally responsive teaching practices, it is also important to have a basis for understanding the background of culturally responsive teaching.  In no way complete, here are three key educators’ contributions.

Gloria Ladson-Billings–Introduced the term culturally relevant pedagogy, calling on educators to engage learners whose experiences and cultures have been traditionally excluded.  She identified three goals to be accomplished from culturally relevant teaching practices.  Teaching must yield academic success, help to develop positive cultural identities (while helping them achieve academically), and help them recognize social inequalities.  

Geneva Gay-Coined the term “culturally responsive teaching” and developed a framework focusing on instructional techniques, strategies, and practices, calling on teachers to make changes on multiple levels and adopt an asset-based view of students. In doing so and in providing resources and assistance, students cultivate positive self-efficacy and an academic mindset. 

Zaretta Hammond–Focused on the link between neuroscience and culturally responsive teaching, creating a four-point Ready for Rigor framework.  Hammond shows how the brain responds to a variety of teaching approaches and learning environments.  She believes that culturally responsive teaching has the power to prepare underperforming students of color for rigorous learning, achieve better academic outcomes for struggling students, and, thus, close the achievement gap. 

Amanda Melsby has been a professional educator for 20 years.  She taught English before working as an assistant principal and later as a high school principal.  Amanda holds an Ed.D. in Educational Practice and Leadership and is currently a dean of teaching and learning.