In this unit, while you’re mapping out your chapter sections, subsections, and spotlights, you can apply the equity-minded instructional design approaches we introduced in the matrix we shared in Unit 1. This section includes resources to help you outline your chapter content with an emphasis on Culturally Responsive Teaching.

Recall your review of student demographics at your institution when you drafted a project equity statement in Unit 2. Recognizing existing cultural diversity is key to creating culturally responsive textbooks in Oregon.

Culturally Responsive Teaching: Context and Definitions

As you fill in your outline with content ideas, culturally responsive teaching helps to clarify your equity lens. Some of our authors may be beginners with this framework, while others likely bring extensive experience. Here, we’ll briefly establish some context and definitions for a shared starting point.

Culturally Responsive Teaching recognizes that diverse cultural influences shape how students learn. Cultural influences inform how a student responds to a textbook, an instructor, and a learning community, and in turn, how textbooks, instructors, and learning communities can respond to students. To be a culturally responsive educator is to examine one’s own cultural perspective and to build curiosity and respect for multiple ways of knowing into textbook and course design.

Definitions of culturally responsive teaching are evolving, and not all scholars agree. The think tank New America provides an overview of major definitions and formative scholars of culturally responsive teaching in Understanding Culturally Responsive Teaching [Website]. Here are a few of the definitions New America offers:

• Gloria Ladson-Billings introduced the term culturally relevant pedagogy. First, teaching must yield academic success. Second, teaching must help students develop positive ethnic and cultural identities while simultaneously helping them achieve academically. Third, teaching must support students’ ability “to recognize, understand, and critique current and social inequalities.”
• Geneva Gay coined the term culturally responsive teaching to define an approach that emphasizes “using the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them.”
• Django Paris developed the term culturally sustaining pedagogy. Culturally sustaining educators help students develop a positive cultural identity while teaching math, reading, problem-solving, and civics (Muñiz, 2019).

Do any of these definitions especially resonate with you and your work? How do they complement each other and where do they diverge?

In your textbook outline, spotlights (defined in figure Y1 4.4) can reflect the fact that many cultures use visual storytelling, music, and collective problem-solving as part of the learning process. For example, here are three strategies recommended by Zaretta Hammond (2015):

• Gamify It: Incorporating games into chapter spotlights and chapter overviews can allow students to solve puzzles, experience repetition, and make connections between otherwise unrelated concepts.
• Make it Social: Write discussion questions that give students opportunities to share their experiences and interact with peers. Consider linking to existing open education projects that students could participate in or contribute to through your book.
• Storify It: When addressing complex topics in spotlights, create narrative examples to explain concepts and processes. Stories can help the brain absorb information more quickly, according to UDL and anti-racism curriculum expert Andratesha Fritzgerald (2022).

Design for Culturally Responsive Teaching in your Book Outline

Specific chapter elements in your {Course #} About This Book document can show your reviewers how you plan to engage with culturally responsive teaching as an author. Explore About this Book Example for CJA 220 [Google Doc] to see how other authors implemented culturally responsive teaching at this stage of the project. The authors incorporate culturally responsive design in the following ways:

• Learning objectives engage students in discussion of real world issues.
• Chapter overview and chapter spotlights use stories to center underrepresented people and communities in their discipline.
• Proposed chapter topics reflect contributions of diverse scholarship in the field.

This project works with an Equity Consultant to ensure that considerations of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are built into the development process from the very beginning of the project and remain a priority at every step of the way. Authors can ask the Equity Consultant to assist with project design and provide recommendations and feedback on the materials you’ve developed so far. By the end of the first week of this unit, write an email to the Project Manager that responds to the prompts in the box below.

Licenses and Attributions for Applying an Equity-Minded Approach to Curriculum Design

Open content, original

“Applying an Equity-Minded Approach to Curriculum Design” by Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Open content, shared previously

“Culturally Responsive Teaching: Context and Definitions” is adapted from Culturally responsive teaching: context and definitions by Jen Klaudinyi, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

“Chapter Outline Reflection: Culturally Responsive Teaching” is adapted from Reflection Guide for a Culturally Responsive Curricula by New America, licensed CC BY 4.0.

References