Culturally Responsive Educational Theories

What may elicit that frustration, joy, or determination may differ across cultures, because cultures differ in their definitions of novelty, hazard, opportunity, and gratification, and in their definitions of appropriate responses. Thus, the response a student has to a learning activity reflects his or her culture. While the internal logic as to why a student does something may not coincide with that of the teacher, it is, nonetheless, present.

And, to be effective, the teacher must understand that perspective. Rather than trying to know what to do to students, we must work with students to interpret and deepen their existing knowledge and enthusiasm for learning. From this viewpoint, motivationally effective teaching is culturally responsive teaching. Most educators with whom we have worked would agree that there is a strong relationship between culture and motivation, and that it only makes sense to understand a student's perspective. Why, then, do we have such difficulty acting this way in the classroom? One major reason is that we feel very little social pressure to act otherwise.

The popular media and structural systems of education remain locked in a deterministic, mechanistic, and behavioristic orientation toward human motivation. As a result, our national consciousness assumes there are many people who need to be motivated by other people. Secondary education is influenced a great deal by the practices of higher education, and both levels tend to follow the precepts of extrinsic reinforcement. Teaching and testing practices, competitive assessment procedures, grades, grade point averages, and eligibility for select vocations and colleges form an interrelated system.

This system is based on the assumption that human beings will strive to learn when they are externally rewarded for a specific behavior or punished for lack of it. Schools and colleges successfully educate a disproportionately low number of low-income and ethnic minority students Wlodkowski and Ginsberg Because the importance of grades and grade point averages increases as a student advances in school, it is legitimate to question whether extrinsic motivation systems are effective for significant numbers of students across cultures.

We can only conclude that, as long as the educational system continues to relate motivation to learn with external rewards and punishments, culturally different students will, in large part, be excluded from engagement and success in school. It is part of human nature to be curious, to be active, to initiate thought and behavior, to make meaning from experience, and to be effective at what we value. These primary sources of motivation reside in all of us, across all cultures. When students can see that what they are learning makes sense and is important, their intrinsic motivation emerges.

We can influence the motivation of students by coming to know their perspective, by drawing forth who they naturally and culturally are, and by seeing them as unique and active. Sharing our resources with theirs, working together, we can create greater energy for learning. Intrinsic systems of motivation can accommodate cultural differences. Theories of intrinsic motivation have been successfully applied and researched in areas such as cross-cultural studies Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi ; bilingual education Cummins ; and education, work, and sports Deci and Ryan Ample documentation across a variety of student and regional settings suggests that noncompetitive, informational evaluation processes are more effective than competitive, controlling evaluation procedures Deci et al.

A growing number of educational models, including constructivism and multiple intelligences theory, are based on intrinsic motivation. They see student perspective as central to teaching. Unfortunately, educators must often apply these theories within educational systems dominated by extrinsic reinforcement, where grades and class rank are emphasized.

And, when extrinsic rewards continue to be the primary motivators, intrinsic motivation is dampened. Those students whose socialization accommodates the extrinsic approach surge ahead, while those students—often the culturally different—whose socialization does not, fall behind. A holistic, culturally responsive pedagogy based on intrinsic motivation is needed to correct this imbalance. We propose a model of culturally responsive teaching based on theories of intrinsic motivation. This model is respectful of different cultures and is capable of creating a common culture that all students can accept.

Within this framework, pedagogical alignment—the coordination of approaches to teaching that ensure maximum consistent effect—is critical. The more harmonious the elements of teaching are, the more likely they are to evoke, encourage, and sustain intrinsic motivation. The framework names four motivational conditions that the teacher and students continuously create or enhance.

Establishing inclusion —creating a learning atmosphere in which students and teachers feel respected by and connected to one another. Developing attitude —creating a favorable disposition toward the learning experience through personal relevance and choice. Enhancing meaning —creating challenging, thoughtful learning experiences that include student perspectives and values. Engendering competence —creating an understanding that students are effective in learning something they value. These conditions are essential to developing intrinsic motivation. They are sensitive to cultural differences.

They work in concert as they influence students and teachers, and they happen in a moment as well as over a period of time. Let us look at an actual episode of culturally responsive teaching based on this motivational framework. It occurs in an urban high school social science class with a diverse group of students and an experienced teacher. At the start of a new term, the teacher wants to familiarize students with active research methods.

She will use such methods throughout the semester, and she knows from previous experience that many students view research as abstract, irrelevant, and oppressive work. After reflecting on the framework, her teaching goal, and her repertoire of methods, she randomly assigns students to small groups. She encourages them to discuss any previous experiences they may have had in doing research as well as their expectations and concerns for the course. Each group then shares its experiences, expectations, and concerns as she records them on the chalkboard.

Culturally relevant teaching

In this manner, she is able to understand her students' perspectives and to increase their connection to one another and herself motivational condition: The teacher explains that most people are researchers much of the time, and she asks the students what they would like to research among themselves. After a lively discussion, the class decides to investigate and predict the amount of sleep some members of the class had the previous night. This experience engages student choice, increases the relevance of the activity, and contributes to the favorable disposition emerging in the class motivational condition: The students are learning in a way that includes their experiences and perspectives.

Five students volunteer to serve as subjects, and the other students form research teams. Each team must develop a set of observations and questions to ask the volunteers. They cannot ask them how many hours of sleep they had the night before. After they ask their questions, the teams rank the five volunteers from the most to the least amount of sleep. When the volunteers reveal the amount of time they slept, the students discover that no research team was correct in ranking more than three students. After the discussion, the teacher asks the students to write a series of statements about what this activity has taught them about research.

Students then break into small groups to exchange their insights. Self-assessment helps the students to gain, from an authentic experience, an understanding of something they may value motivational condition: This snapshot of culturally responsive teaching illustrates how the four motivational conditions constantly influence and interact with one another.

Without establishing inclusion small groups to discuss experiences and developing attitude students choosing a relevant research , the enhancement of meaning research teams devising hypotheses may not have occurred with equal ease and energy; and the self-assessment to engender competence what students learned from their perspective may have had a dismal outcome.

According to this model of teaching, all the motivational conditions contribute to student engagement. Although the above event actually occurred, it may sound like a fairy tale because everything worked smoothly. In reality, teaching situations often become fragmented by the competing needs and interests of a diverse student body.

Motivation Is Inseparable from Culture

All too often, we use educational norms and procedures that are contradictory. The result is that we confuse students and decrease their intrinsic motivation. For example, consider the teacher who uses cooperative learning yet gives pop quizzes; or who espouses constructivist learning yet grades for participation; or who abhors discrimination yet calls mainly on boys during class discussions. In an effort to help educators avoid such errors of incoherence, we have compiled educational norms, procedures, and structures that are effective from a motivational as well as multicultural perspective see fig.

Together, they provide an integrated system of teaching practices for our model of culturally responsive teaching. They are categorized according to the motivational conditions of the framework:. Norms are the explicit values espoused by the teacher and students. Procedures are learning processes that carry out the norms.

Structures are the rules or binding expectations that support the norms and procedures. Emphasize the human purpose of what is being learned and its relationship to the students' experience. Share the ownership of knowing with all students. The class assumes a hopeful view of people and their capacity to change. She wrote, "Even without being consciously aware of it, culture determines how we think, believe, and behave" [14] In other words, culture is a student's beliefs, motivations, and even social groups and norms.

Thus, the teacher who practices culturally relevant teaching understands that culture manifests in a variety of adaptations within how students prefer to learn. A culturally responsive teacher uses differentiated instruction to tailor learning to every aspect of a student's culture. Many of these researchers and educators support the constructivist theories of education because such perspectives recognize the value of multiple cultural viewpoints.

These dimensions laid the foundation for the move toward culturally relevant teaching. The first dimension is content integration where teachers make a conscious effort to represent a variety of cultures in the curriculum and teaching. The second dimension of knowledge construction asks learners to begin questioning and critically analyzing the biased, and previously accepted, curriculum.

In the third dimension, the teaching focus shifts to encouraging cross-cultural interactions in an effort to reduce prejudice. By the fourth dimension, equitable pedagogy, the teacher uses culturally relevant teaching to change teaching approaches. The purpose of Banks' fourth dimension is to tailor teaching methods to ensure success of students from all cultures. If successful, the fourth dimension and culturally relevant teaching will manifest into Banks' fifth dimension of an empowered school culture. It is in this stage when teachers and learners critically examine the institution of education for inequities.

Banks' fourth and fifth dimensions are the perfect example of culturally relevant teaching. Teachers who achieve these dimensions, and thus fully realize the impact of culturally relevant teaching, cherish learners who question, seek answers through inquiry, and embrace a mindset of social justice. All of which are the key components of constructivism. James Scheurich believes that culturally relevant pedagogy has a significant importance on our youth because it benefits students no matter what the ethnic background or culture of the students. In a video James Scheurich explains how the success of our country is in the hand of our children and in a society where students of color will no longer be the minority, he expresses how teachers must teach to their audience in order for students to be successful.

In multicultural cities like Toronto, Ontario CRP is currently being used in arts-education alongside other pedagogies, including Purpose Driven Education, that encourage authenticity, reclaiming personal power, and self-love through exploration of one's own familial and ethnic history. A number of authors, including Gay and Lipman have identified characteristics of culturally responsive teaching.

In order to be culturally relevant, teachers must create an accommodating and inviting classroom culture, if they are to reach diverse audiences. Classrooms have become more and more diverse as generations of students enter the school system, so it has become increasingly important to integrate cultural awareness in the classroom. Teachers must demonstrate that they care for their students and their cultural needs, because a genuine attitude of interest is likely to yield positive emotions that empower and motivate students. In this method, the students' voice is heard, and the classroom teacher becomes more of a facilitator than a "director".

Students then feel more empowered, and autonomous in their own learning. Gloria Ladson-Billings has several research projects and articles where she interviewed diverse schools. She mainly focused on low socioeconomic schools. After identifying several exceptional teachers in public schools in low-socioeconomic, mostly African American school districts, Ladson-Billings spent time observing and trying to explain their success with students who are typically pushed to the margins by public education.

Ladson-Billings found that all of the teachers shared pride in and commitment to their profession and had an underlying belief that all children could be successful. Similarly, many educators recommend cooperative learning methods as effective teaching strategies to promote culturally relevant learning.

A Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching - Educational Leadership

This way students learn to work together towards common goals. Students learn important skills such as teamwork, and embracing other learning styles. There have been many studies done in response to how students respond to teachers that exhibit the above characteristics, incorporating the principles and use of these strategies within the classroom.

In the article "Telling Their Side of the Story: Howard looked at the "perceptions and interpretations" of students who have experienced this type of learning environment. The qualitative data which included students response, is evidence that this is a positive and effective form of pedagogy. Games and cross-cultural activities allow students personal interaction with different cultures.

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For instance, in the three-hour game, "Ba Fa Ba Fa", students participate in one of two very different cultures and must learn the languages and customs of that cultural group. Similar to this activity, is the program "Tribes" implemented into many elementary classrooms, to help stunts understand their school and classroom as unique and diverse communities.

Other suggested strategies include family history research where students interview family members and learn about familial cultural influences on their own lives, and reflective writing where students write about and share their beliefs and cultural assumptions. Meta-reflection through these activities is very important to student learning, about themselves and their peers. Learning about new cultures through this activity can be very engaging for students.

It is very important that teachers advocate for students sharing their own personal experiences with their classmates. This allows students to learn more about one another and new cultures in general. As a teacher prepares to implement culturally relevant teaching into the classroom, it is most effective for the teacher to recognize the student's diversity and incorporate their backgrounds into the lesson and classroom environment. The 21st century classroom, and learner are always evolving, and it is important that our students are global thinkers.

Understanding and embracing the variety of cultural backgrounds which make up a classroom is pivotal to lifelong learning, and developing transformative skills for life beyond the education system. Optimistically, technology offers the unique chance for educators to bridge the curriculum of school to the 21st century learner, as culturally relevant teaching intends. The most significant barrier to the implementation of culturally relevant teaching has been the prevailing disconnect between school learning and the real-world needs of students - particularly minority students.

Yet, when used correctly, "computer technology can provide students with an excellent tool for applying concepts in a variety of contexts, thereby breaking the artificial isolation of school subject matter from the real-world situations" [53] Technology permeates the real-world environment of the 21st century student. It is literally integral in the culture of the digital native learner.

According to their literature review, Conole et al. Thus, if schools utilize technology, the curriculum becomes truly relevant and responsive to the learner of the 21st century. In school learning mirrors the learning they engage in outside of school. With technology, students possess the ability to connect and interact with colleagues, across the globe, who share their views and beliefs.

In interviews, digital natives report that, "lost cost communication technologies such as Skype, MSN chat, and email were considered invaluable forms of communication. These cross-cultural interactions, nearly impossible before global technologies, lead to the depth of questioning and critical thought needed to be successful in the 21st century, global society. In short, students use social networking and technological connections to connect with social and cultural peers but ultimately engage in interactions with members of a variety of cultural groups.

These interactions can be quite empowering for modern learners. The 21st century learner is what Neil Selwyn refers to as an, "empowered digital native". In contrast, they are proficient at using technology to tailor their own learning. Within seconds, learners can access a wealth of information and knowledge and no longer must trust solely the limited perspective presented in their textbook. The 21st century learner is accustomed to using technology to challenge preconceived information. Create a positive learning environment: Know, understand, and work with families that come from different race and ethnicities Gonzalez-Mena and Pulido-Tobiassen, Expose children to role models from their own culture as well as those from other cultures Gonzalez-Mena and Pulido-Tobiassen, Utilize student's cultures to help them learn the subjects and skills taught in school Gollnick and Chinn, Start teaching multi-cultural education to students at an early age Russel, Six Tips for Teaching Diversity.

Retrieved November 15, from www. Use literacy and children's books in the classroom to promote culturally relevant teaching. By using texts that have characters of all different backgrounds, students can easily learn about new cultures Ladson-Billings, Not all educators favor culturally relevant teaching. Indeed, there are many practical challenges to implementing culturally relevant pedagogy including a lack of enforcement of culturally relevant teaching methods, and the tendency to view students as individual units only, rather than seeing them as linked inseparably with their cultural groups.

Locked in Mid-Century

Therefore, another challenge for educators is to prepare reflective practitioners who can connect with diverse students and their families. Given these demographics, Kenneth Fasching-Varner and Vanessa Dodo-Seriki have suggested that disconnects in teacher and student identity lead to "Free and Reduced Pedagogy," or a non-student first approach that reduces students to cultural differences, discrediting students based on their identitites and differences in identities between teachers and students.

Demographic projections predict that cultural and ethnic diversity will increase. Students of color will become the majority in the United States by There are many examples of culturally relevant programs: Advancement via Individual Determination AVID is a program from the San Diego California public schools that helps underrepresented students including those from different cultural groups by mixing low-achieving students with high-achieving students in college preparation programs.

Another California-based group focused on culturally relevant teaching is the Umoja Community. Umoja works with students, colleges and the community to promote awareness, instill values and provide the foundations needed to achieve success, particularly for African American students, although it is committed to helping all students. The Russian Mission School in Alaska incorporates Native American culture with the standard curriculum and emphasizes hands-on activities that are relevant to their local lifestyle.