
Culturally Responsive Pedagogy strategies to boost student engagement
- Student-centric course. Identifying and incorporating students’ interests in course play an important role in...
- Make room for differences. Educators can motivate and get the best out of their students by making room for cultural...
- Encourage group interaction in class. In a culturally...
- Activate students' prior knowledge. ...
- Make learning contextual. ...
- Encourage students to leverage their cultural capital. ...
- Reconsider your classroom setup. ...
- Build relationships.
What does the term 'culturally relevant' mean?
Your organization is culturally relevant if what you do and how you do it is relevant to multicultural audiences. What you do can encompass programming, advocacy, curriculum, or any of the substantive mission-driven pieces of your work.
What is culturally relevant curriculum?
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) is a philosophical outlook towards one’s approach to teaching that informs the what, the how, and the why. CRP focuses on the academic and personal success of students as individuals and as a collective. It ensures students engage in academically rigorous curriculum and learning, feel affirmed in their ...
How to be culturally relevant?
- Self-awareness – Engage in self-reflection and self-understanding to develop an accurate view of self. Take the time to reflect on how your different social identities (e.g. ...
- Valuing of others – Be curious! Demonstrate a willingness to learn from others around you (e.g. ...
- Growth – Remember, practicing cultural humility is a process. ...
What is culturally responsive teaching?
Culturally responsive teaching is about making school learning relevant and effective for learners by drawing on students’ cultural knowledge, life experiences, frames of reference, languages, and performance and communication styles.

How do you apply culturally relevant pedagogy?
Five Essential Strategies to Embrace Culturally Responsive...Know your students. ... Be aware of your own personal biases. ... Transform your pedagogy and curriculum. ... Respect and reinforce student culture. ... Involve family and community.
How can you practice culturally sustaining pedagogy?
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy in the Literacy ClassroomSeek out nontraditional texts. In our research, literacy teachers sought out nontraditional read-alouds and mentor texts for writing. ... Explore and model meshing languages. ... Encourage students to explore alternative cultural affiliations.
What are culturally relevant practices?
Culturally-responsive practices involve recognizing and incorporating the assets and strengths all students bring into the classroom, and ensuring that learning experiences, from curriculum through assessment, are relevant to all students.
What are examples of culturally relevant pedagogy?
15 Culturally-Responsive Teaching Strategies and ExamplesLearn About Your Students. ... Interview Students. ... Integrate Relevant Word Problems. ... Present New Concepts by Using Student Vocabulary. ... Bring in Guest Speakers. ... Deliver Different Forms of Content through Learning Stations. ... Gamify Lessons. ... Call on Each Student.More items...•
What is meant by culturally relevant pedagogy?
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy is a theoretical model that focuses on multiple aspects of student achievement and supports students to uphold their cultural identities. Culturally Relevant Pedagogy also calls for students to develop critical perspectives that challenge societal inequalities.
How can a teacher be culturally relevant?
7 Culturally Responsive Teaching StrategiesActivate students' prior knowledge. ... Make learning contextual. ... Consider your classroom setup. ... Form relationships. ... Discuss social and political issues. ... Tap into students' cultural capital. ... Incorporate popular culture.
What are the 3 key concepts of culturally relevant pedagogy?
CRP, a pedagogical framework coined by Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings in the early '90s, rests on three fundamental pillars—academic achievement, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness.
What are the 5 key elements of culturally sustaining pedagogy?
Utilizing Culturally Inclusive, Proficient, Responsive, Relevant & Sustaining Practice and Pedagogies:Engaging refugee students' home and cultural communities and connecting with their prior learning experiences, funds of knowledge, interests, talents, and values (see details below).
What does culturally relevant teaching look like in a classroom?
Culturally responsive teaching is: using students' cultural experiences in daily instruction. embracing native language and students' families as assets. creating a classroom environment that represents and respects all students.
How can you be culturally inclusive in the classroom?
For example, some classroom practices may include: providing students with opportunities to share stories of their life, showing students everyday photos of people from different ethnicities making a positive impact when opportunities are presented during instruction, welcoming guest speakers making positive ...
What is a culturally responsive pedagogy and try to discuss about this practice in your school?
Culturally responsive pedagogy is a student-centered approach to teaching in which the students' unique cultural strengths are identified and nurtured to promote student achievement and a sense of well-being about the student's cultural place in the world.
What are the nature and principles of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy?
The staple of CRP's emphasis on empowerment rests in its three central tenets that "(a) students must experience academic success; (b) students must develop and/or maintain cultural competence; and (c) students must develop a critical consciousness through which they challenge the status quo of their current social ...
What does culturally sustaining pedagogy look like in the classroom?
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) challenges me to create democratic, pluralistic spaces for and with students. As part of re-imagining our classroom as more dialogic, students engage in inquiry to explore, struggle with and perhaps overcome social injustice by creating understanding through the texts we encounter.
What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy?
CSP seeks to perpetuate and foster—to sustain—linguistic, liter- ate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling and as a needed response to demographic and social change.
How do you foster a culturally sustaining classroom?
There are however, steps that school districts can encourage in order to make the learning environment in classrooms more culturally responsive.Assess your own personal biases. ... Get to know your students. ... Adapt your teaching and curriculum. ... Elevate the students' culture and native language. ... Involve family and community.
How culturally sustaining pedagogies can change the impact of education?
Culturally relevant pedagogy helps students become academically successful, cultivates cultural competence by helping students accept and affirm their cultural identities, and develops critical consciousness. Culturally sustaining pedagogy maintains heritage, values, cultural and linguistic pluralism.
Why is culturally responsive teaching important?
Culturally responsive teaching is especially pertinent today because the traditional education path from school to college to a career and life in the suburbs isn’t a reality—or desire —for everyone, Childers-McKee says. Educators’ approaches to teaching need to reflect these differences.
How to be culturally responsive in the classroom?
5 Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies for Educators. 1. Activate students’ prior knowledge. Students are not blank slates, Childers-McKee says; they enter the classroom with diverse experiences. Teachers should encourage students to draw on their prior knowledge in order to contribute to group discussions, which provides an anchor to learning.
How can inclusive instruction be beneficial?
Making use of thoughtful, inclusive instruction can have positive effects on students that last far beyond their time in the classroom. Employing culturally responsive teaching strategies is a small step toward enacting meaningful change in education.
What are some examples of culturally responsive teaching?
Using traditional teaching methods, educators may default to teaching literature by widely accepted classic authors: William Shakespeare, J.D. Salinger, and Charles Dickens, for example, adhering to widely accepted interpretations of the text.
How to make your classroom more culturally responsive?
“These are all small changes you can make to your classroom more culturally responsive ,” Childers-McKee says.
Why is it important to encourage students who don't have a voice?
Because not all students come from the same background, it’s important to encourage those who don’t to have a voice. Say, for example, you teach an English class that contains ESL students. It’s important to find ways to activate the experiences they do have—their cultural capital, Childers-McKee says.
Why should teachers encourage students to draw on their prior knowledge?
Teachers should encourage students to draw on their prior knowledge in order to contribute to group discussions, which provides an anchor to learning. Taking a different approach to the literature that’s taught in classrooms is one example of this. 2.
What is culturally sustaining pedagogy?
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy: An introduction. By AVANTI CHAJED. Culturally sustaining practices (CSP) allow, invite, and encourage students to not only use their cultural practices from home in school, but to maintain them. CSP allows students to exist not only in the culture of their school, but also in the culture of their home.
Why is it important to use a CSP approach?
Incorporating a CSP approach into your practice can help you to question the deficit lens that may exist in your school, and work towards diversifying materials that are available to your students. From a CSP standpoint, students and their families are viewed as people who possess assets for your classroom — a stark contrast to the deficit lens, which implies that they are lacking in some way. This shift in mindset will help you to meet the specific cultural needs of your students as you begin to bring their cultural practices into the classroom.
Is it necessary to know every culture?
Getting started. It’s not necessary to know everything about every culture or language in order to incorporate CSP into your classroom. It is important, however, to try to get to know the cultures and lives of the students you’re teaching, and to evaluate ways in which your instructional practices can support your students.
Is there a way to practice CSP?
There is no one way of practicing CSP — this would go against the very idea of sustaining students’ cultures! — but there are ways to understand what a CSP approach may require from a teacher. Think about CSP as a mindset rather than a series of practices.
What is culturally responsive pedagogy?
No single teaching approach will engage each student at once, but building a strategy to consistently deliver culturally-responsive lessons will help you appeal to diverse learners with distinct backgrounds. Rooted in differentiated instruction principles, culturally-responsive pedagogy aims to link content -- from delivery to assessment -- with students’ ancestral and contemporary cultures. To augment their understanding and responsiveness, this involves:
Why is it important to have culturally responsive lessons?
Delivering culturally-responsive lessons can not only help you engage students, but allow them to make personal connections with content. Greater student investment should lead to other benefits, such as more rigor and motivation. A happier, focused classroom is the ideal outcome.>>Create or log in to your teacher account on Prodigy -- a free game-based learning platform that delivers a range of culturally-relevant math content through engaging word and scenario-based problems. Aligned with curricula across the English-speaking world, it’s loved by more than 700,000 teachers and 20 million students
How to develop positive attitudes?
Develop Positive Attitudes -- This further focuses on relating content to students. A popular method is allowing them to choose between activities and assessments that let them showcase their values, strengths and experiences. For example, while providing clear learning goals and evaluation criteria, encourage students to submit their own project ideas.
Why is problem based learning culturally responsive?
This is because, when presenting a relatable real-world problem for your students to solve, two cultural connections will typically occur. First, there will likely be a cultural link in the question, whether it’s explicit or students make it themselves. Second, because they can apply different approaches to solve the question, they may use unique cultural perspectives. But if you want to create a scenario with explicit cultural ties, consider:
How to encourage students to submit ideas for their own projects?
By asking students to submit ideas for their own projects, the benefits of choice extend beyond free study time. Specifically, they should build confidence by showcasing their strengths. So, encourage them to pitch ideas for taking a project from concept to completion. A student must show how the product will meet academic standards in his or her pitch. If the idea falls short, give the student ideas to refine it. If the student can’t refine the idea, he or she can choose a project from a list of options you provide. Not only will you be pleasantly surprised by some pitches, but you may generate ideas for future culturally-responsive exercises and assessments.
Why are guest speakers important?
Guest speakers can bring context and passion to history, geography and social studies lessons , capturing student interest. A war veteran could deliver a vivid narrative of his or her experiences. A mountaineer could give a striking recount of scaling Lhotse. Both could answer questions many teachers would struggle with, while engaging students much more effectively than a slideshow. Plus, according to a 2015 study by the Economics of Education Review, students are often encouraged to work harder when they share a background with an educator. So, diverse guest speakers may inherently engage and motivate students who share a culture with them.
How to build a stronger understanding of students' values and habits?
You’ll build a stronger understanding of students’ values and habits -- as well as strengths and weaknesses -- by individually asking them questions. While running a large-group exercise, pull each student aside for a few minutes. Ask about:
What is culturally responsive pedagogy?
Culturally responsive pedagogy is a student-centered approach to teaching in which the students’ unique cultural strengths are identified and nurtured to promote student achievement and a sense of well-being about the student’s cultural place in the world.
What are the three dimensions of culturally responsive pedagogy?
Culturally responsive pedagogy is divided into three functional dimensions: the institutional dimension, the personal dimension, and the instructional dimension. The institutional dimension of culturally responsive pedagogy emphasizes the need for reform of the cultural factors affecting the organization of schools, ...
What is the biggest obstacle to culturally responsive instruction for most educators?
Given that a majority of teachers hail from a middle class European-American background, the biggest obstacle to successful culturally responsive instruction for most educators is disposing of their own cultural biases and learning about the backgrounds of the students that they will be teaching.
What are the three processes necessary for preparing to teach in a culturally responsive classroom?
The processes necessary for preparing to teach in a culturally responsive classroom can be broken down into three general categories: exploring one’s own culture, learning about other cultures, and learning about students’ cultures.
What is the personal dimension of teaching?
The personal dimension refers to the process by which teachers learn to become culturally responsive. The instructional dimension refers to practices and challenges associated with implementing cultural responsiveness in the classroom.
What is instructional theory?
Given the wealth of diversity in our nation’s public schools, it is no wonder that instructional theory is advocating a shift toward a pedagogy that emphasizes a comfortable and academically enriching environment for students of all ethnicities, races, beliefs, and creeds.
How to overcome cultural bias?
Fortunately, initial cultural biases can be overcome via hard work and reflection. The necessary element for discarding pre-existing biases is a willingness to go through a process of rigorous self-appraisal in order to learn what needs to be changed to teach in a culturally responsive fashion.