What is culturally responsive teaching?

Geneva Gay defines culturally responsive teaching as “using the cultural characteristics, experiences and perspectives of ethnically diverse students as conduits for teaching them more effectively” (Gay, 2002, p. 106).

She talks about the importance of teachers being culturally sensitive. I really liked this because it incorporates principles similar to Gardner’s multiple intelligence with a focus on the inquiry approach. Teachers take the facilitator role and are encouraged to promote diversity via lessons and classroom environment.

Five essential elements of culturally responsive teaching 

• developing a cultural diversity knowledge base
  • understanding cultural characteristics such as “cultural values, traditions, communication, learning styles, contributions, and relational patterns” (Gay, 2002, p. 107)
• designing culturally relevant curricula
  • deal directly with controversy, study wide range of ethnic individuals/groups, contextualize issues within race, class, ethnicity, and gender, include multiple kinds of knowledge and perspectives
  • displays within classrooms represent diversity
  • thorough and critical analyses of how ethnic groups and experiences are presented in mass media/popular culture
• demonstrating cultural caring and building learning communities
  • culturally responsive care means to expect high-level success
  • become a facilitator to communal learning environment –> holistic approach
• cross-culture communication
  • “multicultural communication competency” (Gay, 2002, p. 112)
  • intellectual thoughts are “culturally encoded” –> important to understand varying communication system
• responding to ethnic diversity in the delivery of instruction
  • develop repertoires of multicultural examples
    • include ethnic literature, illustrations, stories, experiences

(Gay, 2002)

The problem: from here….

I really like this pedagogy, however the only problem regarding this was the fact it lacked research on the detailed outcomes of this teaching method. There were multiple papers on the what and the how of culturally responsive teaching, not not so much of the why. The positive outcomes included academic achievements, social and emotional growth, and empowerment, but they were all quite broad and general.

So my next step into this inquiry is to reflect why this was the case and continue building knowledge in this area so that I can make an educated judgement regarding what to implement and what not to implement.

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Gay, G. (2002). Preparing for culturally responsive teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53 (2) 106-116.