Culturally responsive teacher
From WikEd
Contents |
Description
Being a culturally responsive classroom teacher means more than learning a few words in a student's native language or creating a bulletin board that highlights students' countries of origin. It means being willing to reflect on the ways that classroom management decisions promote or obstruct students' access to learning.
A culturally responsive teacher can be a valuable translator and guide for students, helping them bridge the gap between the familiar and the unknown.
Culturally Responsive Teachers are those who:
- have sociocultural consciousness; that is, those who recognize that the ways people perceive the world, interact with one another, and approach learning, among other things, are deeply influenced by such factors as race/ethnicity, social class, and language. This understanding enables teachers to cross the cultural bonundaries that separate them from their students.
- have affirming views of students from diverse backgrounds, seeing resources for learning in all studentss rather than viewing differences as problems to be solved.
- have a sense that they are both responsible for and capable of bringing about educational change that will make schooling more responsive to studens from diverse backgrounds.
- embrace constructivist views of teaching and learning. That is, they see learning as an active process by which learners give meaning to new information, ideas, principles, and other stimuli; and they see teaching largely as a process of inducing change in students' knowledge and belief systems.
- are familiar with their studenst' prior knowledge and beliefs, derived from both personal and cultural experiences.
- design instruction that builds on what students already know while stretching them beyond the familiar
Application in classrooms and similar settings
A Culturally Responsive Teacher Has 3 Facets
- The First Facet, means you have to learn about your own cultural background. Because so much of one's culture is taken for granted, this process entails making the unseen visible. Otherwise, you may assume that the way you live is the only way to live or your own cultural systme is superior to others.
- The Second Facet, means learning about your students. Your students may for example,know a language that you don't practice, a religious philosophy that is considerably older than your own, have made life-or-death choices that you hope never to face. A little humility, some admitted ignorance, and a willingness to learn more about others will help you cope with potentially overwhelming differences in culture.
- The Third Facet, requires you to share your own culture, your customs,and beliefs, with the students. By doing so, you model respect for others and demonstrate how culture is important in everyone's life.
Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices
- Involving all students in the construction of knowledge
- Inquiry projects
- Having students working collaboratively in small groups of mixed ability
- Authentic dialogues
- Having students assume increasing responsibility for their own learning
- Building on students' personal and culturally strengths
- Helping stuents access prior knowledge and beliefs
- Building on students' interest
- Using examples and analogies from students' lives
- Using appropriate instructional materials
- Tapping community resources
- Creating different paths to learning by using varied instructional activities
- Helping students examine the curriculum from multiple perspectives
- Using varied assessment practices that promote learning
- Making the culture of the classroom inclusive of students
(Villegas & Lucas 2002)
Below is an example of a teacher who is not culturally responsive;
Two young women from Mrs. Klein’s junior math class asked if they could talk to her for a few minutes after school. During the meeting, the girls complained to Mrs. Klein about the behavior of Juan, an exchange student from Guatemala, who had been attending their school for about 3 weeks. The complaints centered on what the girls described as Juan’s “pushy,�? “aggressive,�? “overly friendly�? behavior. “He puts his arm around me n the hallway an is just too close,�? complained one of the girls. “Everybody is getting tired of it,�? said the other.
Mrs. Klein, who had already observed Juan’s forward behavior in her own classroom, told the girls she would try to help. After putting things off for a few days, Mrs. Klein met with Juan and told him directly that touching or grabbing girls was totally unacceptable behavior. “If you want to be liked and accepted here, you cannot continue to be so aggressive,�? she warned him. When she asked him if he understood the situation, he nodded and left the room without saying anything.
From then on, Juan no longer exhibited any “overly friendly�? behavior, was noticeably more quiet, and became basically a loner at school. Although Mrs. Klein felt bad about Juan’s apparent unhappiness, she was confident that she had done the right thing.
A cross-cultural misunderstanding, not the boy’s aggressiveness, is at the center of this problem. For Juan, putting his arm around someone or getting close to them as he talks is merely a normal, acceptable show of friendship. Juan seems to be the victim of misinterpretation, and Mrs. Klein has compounded the problem by not considering the relevant cultural differences during her talks with the girls and with Juan.
Evidence of effectiveness
Critics and their rationale
Signed ‿life experiences‿, testimonies and stories
My elder sister's family had lived in New Zealand for three years. When they first moved there, my nephew was 5 years old and attended one of the elementary schools. He could not speak English at all at that time. During the classes, he usually looked outside of the window, because he could not hear what teacher and other kids were saying. According to my sister, he sometimes showed Attention Deficit Disorder. How could 5 year old kid concentrate on his work without understanding anything that is happening around him? One day, the teacher began to use new teaching method. The teacher let my nephew teach one any Korean word to other kids every day. Every day my nephew taught one Korean word. To teach and explain the meaning of each word, my nephew should learn English too. He began to learn English very quickly. While teaching Korean words, my nephew began to overcome his invisible status and began to get along with other kids. It took six months for my nephew to completely adapt to new environment. My sister still says that he was the greatest teacher who understood the problems of language and still feels thanks to him. - Junghyean Weon -
It is important for teachers to be aware of their students culture and language proficiency before trying to diagnose them with a disability. If there is a child whose first language is not English, assessments and evaluations need to be done in the native language to ensure that accurate information and data are collected. Lily Jimenez
I teach at a very diverse school where many different cultures are represented. I feel it is important to celebrate the many cultures represented which is why for the students research report and project they were allowed to research something related to their culture that interests them. The students then needed to present their research findings and some students dressed up in authentic costumes and performed a particular dance that was part of their culture. This was very interesting for all of the class to see because not only were they learning about the cultures of their peers but also they were getting to learn more about themselves and each other through this project. ~K. Kleckauskas
Being aware of how a student's culture causes them to behave is incredibly important as a teacher. I have noticed differences like that of the Juan example where the amount of physical affection students are comfortable with varies drastically. Many students in my classroom use much more physical interaction with a teacher than students in my high school did. These could range anywhere from touching your hand to get your attention to standing beside you with their elbow on your shoulder while having a passing conversation to giving a hug for a good grade or even just t say hi. It comes so naturally to some of the students that as a teacher you need to be aware of the differences so these actions are not misinterpreted or can be redirected in a positive manner if it makes the teacher uncomfortable. -Andrea P.
References and other links of interest
Here is a link to the wiked page dealing with culturally responsive classroom management (http://moodle.ed.uiuc.edu/wiked/index.php/Culturally_responsive_classroom_management)
Another issue that culturally responsive teachers must address is the Cultural Hegemonist.
Cushner, Kenneth, Averil McClelland, and Philip Safford; Human Diversity in Education, an integrative approach, McGraw Hill, Inc., 1992
Tiedt, Pamela and Iris Tiedt; Multicultural Teaching (A Handbook of Activities, Information, and Resources), Allyn and Bacon, 1995
Villegas, Ana Maria, and Tamara Lucas; Educating Culturally Responsive Teachers, Coherent Approach, State University of New York Press, 2002.
Weinstein, Carol S., Saundra Tomlinson-Clarke, & Mary Curran; "Journal of Teacher Education," Vol.55, No.1, January/February 2004 25-38
The Education Alliance: Principles for Culturally Responsive Teaching
