Reshaping Curriculum
Culturally relevant pedagogy requires teachers to reflect upon and reshape the curriculum to meet the needs of the students in their classroom. This student-centred pedagogical focus encourages academic improvement because all students acquire cultural knowledge; and therefore, learns through cultural diversity. Even if there is a mandated curriculum, adaptations can be made to the outcomes to meet the needs of the students while still achieve those outcomes. Adaptations to the curriculum can be integrated to improve the academic achievement of culturally diverse students.
Integrating culture into the curriculum is an important component of culturally relevant teaching. Teachers can use culture to redesign the existing outcomes to have a positive, meaningful, and engaging influence on all students’ learning. Research on culturally relevant teaching shows that students learn through building on their prior experiences and knowledge by connecting that background to current content and activities in the classroom (Morrison et al., 2008, p. 438). Researchers argue that learning is relevant to students only if it is connected to students’ identities (p. 437). This connection stems from the personal relationship teachers build with each student (Parhar & Sensoy, 2011, p. 195). When teachers learn about their students’ culture, they can use this knowledge to integrate students’ cultural views into the curriculum (p. 199). Integrating students’ culture can be “done as a way to validate students who are culturally diverse, helping instil in them a positive sense of cultural identity” (pp. 199-200). Culturally relevant teachers must use students’ cultural knowledge to assist them in teaching the curriculum. U...
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...sharing personal stories create acceptance among students and strengthen relationships (p. 111). The stories bridge the cultural gap between students of different cultures, increase listening skills, enhance self-reflections, and improve interactions between students. Storytelling also improves connections and relationships so students will stop segregating themselves in their culture group. Storytelling helps student engagement, creates new ways of communicating, helps students look at ideas in a different way, and changes their attitudes toward others. Storytelling allows for an appreciation of culture as students learn and understand other cultures in the classroom. This teaching strategy has proven to be a successful culturally relevant teaching practice. Teachers need professional training and support to effectively implement culturally relevant teaching.
Gloria Ladson-Billings supports this idea in her essay titled “’Yes, But How Do We Do it?’ Practicing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy” and also expands upon its importance by adding the insight of how teachers think about the social contexts, the students, the curriculum, and about instruction, all impact the students because how teachers regards these contexts get woven into their pedagogy, which create the very classrooms for learning.
The article talks about how teachers need to have cultural compatibility. While it might be difficult for some teacher to grasp and understand the different cultures behaviors and beliefs. For those teacher that can are more likely to provide a learning environment that is enriching and responsive to the children’s different cultures. Teacher should have “meaningful interactions with members of other cultures and promote cultural disequilibrium (Colombo, 2005, p. 2).” Activities that have this are more likely to increase cultural competence.
Richards, H., V., Brown, A., F., Forde, T., B. (2006). Addressing diversity in schools: culturally responsive pedagogy. Retreived March 30th 2014from http://www.nccrest.org/Briefs/Diversity_Brief.pdf
Ladson-Billings overviews the concepts of cultural congruency, cultural appropriateness, cultural responsiveness, and cultural compatibility. These terms refer to the way teachers can adapt their language and teaching style to better reflect the culture and the language of their students. However, the problems students of color face, particularly African American students, goes beyond the school culture and climate not reflecting their community culture and climate. The primary issue is a lack of cultural synchronization among teachers and students and a need for culturally relevant practices.
As an educator one must understand that the children you will be teaching will all come from different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different homes with different values. No one student will be the same, and no one student will learn the same. The role of a modern educator is to harness this idea of diversity and channel it into a positive learning atmosphere for children of all backgrounds. “I define culturally responsive teaching as 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” (Gay, 2013, p.50.). The hope for all teachers is to capture the minds of their children, as educators we must learn how our students learn, adapt to their skill set and channel our curriculum to their strength.
The National Curriculum seems to pursue the route of a “… shared and authentic ‘national’ body of accepted knowledge and standards.” (Walkup, 2011). This appears to tell us that, with the National Curriculum, we are brought together, and taught the same subjects, and have similar attainment targets; however once difference that can also come out of this, is the level and standards at which it is taught, this is because different teachers will have different ideas as to how it should be taught.
In an online article Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, & Practice, by G. Gray, culturally responsive teaching is Validating- using the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, and performance styles of diverse students to make learning more appropriate and effective for the students. Culturally Responsive Teaching is Comprehensive- develop intellectual, social, emotional, and political learning. Culturally Responsive Teaching is Multidimensional- curricu...
“Cultural competence is a key factor in enabling educators to be effective with students from cultures other than their own. It is having an awareness of one’s own cultural identity and views about difference, and the ability to learn and build on the varying cultural and community norms of students and their families. It is the ability to understand the within-group differences that make each student unique, while celebrating the between-group variations that make our country a tapestry (National Education Association, 2015).”
Schools throughout America have seen an increase in the cultural diversity of their student population. Census results from the 1990’s indicate that more children from other countries have immigrated into the United States than ever before. Results seem to indicate that the current move and increase in cultural diversity will soon lead to more than 50 percent of the student population being culturally diverse according to Mid-continental Research for Educational Learning. This increase in diverse population should certainly prompt us to develop educational practices that address these students’ needs.
According to Gay, culturally responsive teaching is employing previous experience, performance style of student, and cultural knowledge for the purposes of making learning more suitable and effective for students (Gay, 2000). In other words, culturally responsive teaching practice is using cultural experiences, perceptions of ethnically, and cultural features of student to facilitate when teaching. Furthermore, culturally responsive teaching practice teaches through and to the strength of students. Culturally responsive teaching practices is necessary in connecting the cultural knowledge of students, style of performance, and previous experience to the knowledge of academic with the goal of legitimizing what the students already know. Therefore,
If teachers knew the students cultural honor they would better understand their students, their work ethic to leverage the students attitudes and behaviors. Thus, teachers can create and develop meaningful lessons that engage students and ensure academic success. This can be achieved by having staff training on year and/or month of birth, intelligence, opportunity, practical intelligence, culture, cultural norms, generation, 100,000-hour rule, family history, community/ group culture, value of authority and resiliency affects students’ academic success and how it hinders classroom performance. Knowing this teacher can plan lesson accordingly and ensure that students have opportunities for success, using students background and cultural group as part of the learning process.
The cultural diversity in society, which is reflected in schools, is forcing schools not to solely rely on content-centered curriculum, but to also incorporate student-centered lesson plans based on critique and inquiry. This requires multicultural education to a dominant part of the school system, not just an extra course or unit. Further, it demands that learning itself no longer be seen as obtaining knowledge but rather, education be seen as creating knowledge. Multicultural education should be seen as affirming the diversity of students and communities, promoting the multicultural ideas of the United States, and building the knowledge and behaviors needed for students to be a positive and contributing member of society and the global community as a whole.
Culture is a powerful influence plays a big role in our interactions. Culture may also impact parenting style and a developing child. Having a strong sense of their own cultural history and the traditions associated with it helps children build a positive cultural identity for themselves. This also supports children’s sense of belonging and, by extension, their mental health and wellbeing. This class is crucial in understanding and working well parents, staff, and children. An effective educator understands how students’ cultures affect their perceptions, self-esteem, values, classroom behavior, and learning. As director, I need to use that understanding to help my students and staff feel welcomed, affirmed, respected, and valued. One way that I can do this is by using multicultural literature, especially children’s literature, to honor students’ culture and foster cross-cultural understanding. If cultural differences are not understood by teachers and management, it can lead to miscommunication and misunderstandings on both sides. It will be my job to do all I can to overcome both language and cultural differences to ensure a positive learning environment for
We need to be aware of the diversity in the classroom. Cultural diversity includes: bi-racial, adoptive, immigrant, gay, and step-families. It is a large majority of the students today even in my generation. Focusing on making a balanced curriculum that exposes the students to all of these different backgrounds is very important. I know that it is likely that a teacher will not be able to cater to every student, but it is important to involve each of them. There is a large percentage of students that have dropped out due to the lack of having a connection with the curriculum. It is frustrating that we are lacking progress in our schools to help these children connect when studies show that each cultural group will soon be equal in numbers. We need to form a better
In conducting her research, the author understood that she needed to describe key issues of culturally diverse students, recommend a curriculum approach to address the issues, and discuss the challenges and benefits expected. In reading Cultural and Linguistic Diversity: Issues in Education (2010), s...