Culturally Responsive T&L

Return: https://go.mgpd.org/crt | Twitter: @mGuhlin

These resources are meant to provide assistance in processing Culturally Responsive Teaching, a topic that has become controversial (along with social and emotional learning).

This page addresses some of the big takeaways for me from educators such as Zaretta Hammond, Geneva Gay, and others. You are strongly encouraged to read their books.

Topics

1-Defining Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leadership

2-Why is CR Teaching and Leading Important?

3-Key Findings

4-Resources

5-Books to Read

1-Defining Culturally Responsive T&L

"A culturally responsive leader recognizes the impact of institutionalized racism on their own lives and the lives of the students and families they work with. They embrace their role in mitigating, disrupting, and dismantling systemic oppression" (source).

Read The Leadership Academy's framework.

Culturally Responsive Teaching involves an educator's ability to:

    • recognize students' cultural displays of learning and meaning making

    • respond positively to displays of learning

    • use approaches that rely on cultural knowledge

    • scaffold and connect students' prior knowledge to new concepts and content

    • promote effective information processing

    • understand the power of relationships and SEL in creating a safe learning space

Source: Hammond, Zaretta. Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain.

"Culturally Responsive Teaching provides the mechanisms to help students become the leaders of their own learning"

-Zaretta Hammond

Connecting to children's culture and teaching in ways that taps into culture can scaffold student learning efforts. This isn't new. Bilingual/ESL teachers have been doing this for awhile (more here). These connections help students access rigorous curriculum and develop higher-level academic skills.

"When the brain encounters information, especially during the act of reading and learning, it's searching for and making connections to what is personally meaningful and relevant.

What is relevant and meaningful to an individual is based on his or her cultural frame of reference."
(Source: Zaretta Hammond, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain)

This is their schema.

2-Why Is It Important?

“All teaching is culturally responsive. It’s just a matter of whose culture it is being represented.”

Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billing

"Children from homes in which the language and culture do not closely correspond to that of the school may be at a disadvantage in the learning process. These children often become alienated and feel disengaged from learning. People from different cultures learn in different ways. Their expectations for learning may be different.

For example, students from some cultural groups prefer to learn in cooperation with others, while the learning style of others is to work independently. (source)

Question: "If all students are wired for expansive learning and self-determination, what is needed to activate that wiring for optimal connectivity for students of color?"

Response: "Mediate learning through culturally responsive teaching."

What does Culturally Mediated Instruction Mean?

Instruction is culturally mediated when it incorporates and integrates diverse ways of knowing, understanding, and representing information. Instruction and learning take place in an environment that encourages multicultural viewpoints and allows for inclusion of knowledge that is relevant to the students.

Culturally Responsive Teaching is a pedagogical approach that is...

  • rooted in learning theory and cognitive science

  • helps students build intellective (a.k.a. "fluid") capacity

  • Intellective capacity is the increased power the brain creates to process complex info effectively

Building Intellective Capacity

The CRT teacher assists students in processing what they are learning. They do this by:

  • mediating student learning (based on what they know about how the brain learns and students' cultural models)

  • Outlining processess, strategies, tactics, tools for engaging students in high-leverage social and instructional activities that over time build HOTS

Zaretta Hammond offers a "Ready for Rigor" framework. You will want to read her book, as well as watch the videos in the resources, to get more insights. There's more to this than building intellective capacity.

That said, it's easy to make connections between high-effect size instructional strategies and building intellective capacity.

3-Key Ideas

Geneva Gay

  • Culture refers to a dynamic system of social values, cognitive cods, behavioral standards, worldviews, and beliefs used to give order and meaning to our own lives as well as the lives of others (Delgado-Gaitain & Trueba, 1991 as cited by Geneva Gay)

  • Teachers carry into the classroom their personal cultural background. They perceive students, all of whom are cultural agents, with inevitable prejudice and preconception. Students likewise come to school with personal cultural backgrounds that influence their perceptions of teachers, other students, and the school itself. Together students and teachers construct, mostly without being conscious of doing it, an environment of meanings enacted in individual and group behaviors, of conflict and accommodation, rejection and acceptance, alienation and withdrawal. (George and Louise Spindler (1994))

  • McCarty, Wallace, Lynch, and Benally (1991) found that the image of Navajo children as silent and passive students was totally destroyed by teaching that connected school learning with cultural backgrounds and lived experiences. When their social experiences were incorporated into curriculum and instruction, and their cultural and linguistic resources were used to solve academic problems, the Navajo students became physically energized, intellectually engaged, and verbally fluent in the classroom.

  • Boggs, Watson-Gegeo, and McMillen (1985), Tharp and Gallimore (1988), and Au (1993) report similar results from using culturally familiar content and styles of teaching on the academic achievement of Native Hawaiian students.

  • Krater, Zeni, and Cason (1994), as well as Lee (1993) have done likewise for African Americans;

  • Escalante and Dirmann (1990) as well as Sheets (1995a) with Latinos; and

  • Philips (1983) with students on the Warm Springs Reservation and Greenbaum (1985) with Cherokee elementary school students.

  • "Matching the contextual conditions for learning to the cultural experiences of the learner increases task engagement and hence increases task performance" (B. Allen & Butler, 1996, p. 317).

Zaretta Hammond

  • Research finds that unconsciously teachers reinforce learned helplessness among low performing student of color

  • Relationships became so important to our survival, the brain created an entire social engagement system to ensure we stay connected and in good standing with the tribe (Porges, 2011).

  • Empowerment through validation is a critical feature of culturally responsive teaching because it helps restore students' sense of hope (Ladson-Billings, 2009)

  • Children learn about themselves and the world around them within the context of culture (Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory at Brown University, 2002).

  • Students from minority cultures may feel pressured to disavow themselves of their cultural beliefs and norms in order to assimilate into the majority culture. This, however, can interfere with their emotional and cognitive development and result in school failure (Sheets, 1999). (source)

  • "According to education researchers Hattie and Timperley (2007), feedback is one of the most powerful tools we have to improve learning. The brain needs feedback or it will keep doing the same thing over and over even if that move doesn't result in improved skill or performance. The very act of reviewing and applying feedback stimulates the growth of neurons and dendrites in the brain. This action grows more grey matter,"

Dr. Muhammad Khalifa - Culturally Responsive Leadership

Dr. Khalifa suggests leaders ask themselves questions such as:

  • How have I enjoyed privilege over other groups, especially those that I serve in my school?

  • Am I aligning my discussions and items at staff meetings with equity?

  • Do I leverage school resources in ways that center the needs of minoritized students?

  • How am I including parent (or caregiver) voice in the governing and policy making at the school?

  • Am I hiring a staff that is consistent with community demographics and who are willing to be self-reflective around issues of oppression?

  • What are the ways that I routinely and systematically ask the questions in this table (and others like them)?

4-Resources

5-Books