1.3 Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT)
What is Culturally Responsive Teaching?
Culturally Responsive Teaching recognizes that diverse cultural influences shape how students learn. Cultural influences inform how a student responds to an instructor and a learning community, and in turn, how instructors and learning communities respond to students. To be a culturally responsive educator is to examine one’s own cultural lens and to build curiosity and respect for multiple ways of knowing and expressing knowledge into course design.
In the short video below, Gloria Ladson-Billings identifies three strategies for culturally relevant pedagogy from her research with successful teachers of African-American students in the late 1980s:
- a laser-like focus on student learning beyond test scores alone: educators care about the development of a full range of academic achievement
- cultural competence: not the do’s and don’ts of a particular culture, but embracing one’s own culture as well as fluency and facility in at least one other culture
- critical consciousness: an awareness of the “so what” factor and being able to connect course content to affective motivations for students
Culturally responsive course design invites students to share their experiences and their stories with one another as part of the achievement of learning outcomes. A culturally responsive course also invites the voices and expertise of culturally diverse scholars and leaders into the course content itself.
Culturally Responsive Teaching in Practice
Zaretta Hammond recommends three strategies for Culturally Responsive Course Design [Blogpost]:
- Gamify It: Incorporate games into your activities and assignments will allow students to solve puzzles, experience repetition, and make connections between otherwise unrelated concepts. This draws on oral traditions common in many non-Western cultures.
- Make it Social: Give students opportunities to share their experiences, develop trust, and build a strong social presence in their course community.
- Storify It: Ask students to build narratives about concepts, topics, or processes, as “stories are a straw to the brain,” according to UDL and Antiracism curriculum expert Andratesha Fritzgerald.
Reflection Questions
- How do you explain the “so what” of your course content to students?
- Where do you recognize diverse cultural influences at work in your discipline or field and invite students to do the same?
- When do your assignments allow students room to express lived experiences and knowledge that otherwise wouldn’t be included?
References
“Gloria Ladson-Billings – Successful Teachers of African American Children.” The Brainwaves Video Anthology. YouTube. Oct 23 2015. Accessed June 2 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmAZjNRmalI&t=4s.
“3 Tips to Make Any Lesson More Culturally Responsive.” Zaretta Hammond. Cult of Pedagogy. April 1 2015. Accessed June 2 2023. https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/culturally-responsive-teaching-strategies/
Licenses and Attributions
All content on this page is by Veronica Vold for Open Oregon Educational Resources and is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
