What is Culturally Responsive Teaching?
Culturally responsive teaching is a pedagogy that recognises the importance of including pupils’ cultural references in all aspects of learning.
Burnham (2020) highlights that “Teachers have more diverse classrooms today. We don’t have students sitting in front of us with the same background or experience, so instruction has to be different”. She states that “it needs to build on individual and cultural experiences and their prior knowledge. It needs to be justice-oriented and reflect the social context we’re in now. That’s what we mean when we talk about culturally responsive teaching.”
Cultural Responsiveness in Education
12% of school students in Ireland (under 15 years of age) are from a migration background. Being culturally responsive means to be sensitive to, and respectful of, and taking cognisance of social and cognitive cultural variations.
Being respectful of a pupil's social perspective of culture means respect for a students way of identifying with others both within and outside the learning environment.
Teachers need to be aware of the cultural dimensions impacting on behaviour, learning and assessment of their pupils.
To engage students that are affiliated with a different culture from your own, consider how you can become aware of your own biases, and how you can adapt and learn.
In order to make cultural responsiveness an integral part of our teaching, it is important for teachers to continue to be reflective practitioners who can adapt their practice when the situation requires it.
Creating a Culturally Responsive Classroom
Creating a Culturally Responsive Lesson
Learner Characteristics
Benefits of Culturally Responsive Assessment
Globalisation which Portera (2008) defines as
"The spread of the mass media in our daily lives, the growth of information technology, profound geopolitical change, and the establishment of new markets’ (p. 481) means that all young people need to learn the normality of diversity and need to develop the skills of living in harmonious diversity"
Researchers who support plurilingualism in learning situations maintain that all students benefit by gaining an increase in:
language awareness (Hancock, 2017);
well-being
self-efficacy and motivation (DeBacker & Van Avermaet, 2017);
learner autonomy (Kirwan, 2017).
Criteria for Culturally Responsive Assessment
The literature states that the following types of assessment have the potential to be culturally fair
Performance based assessment
Baker, O'Neil and Linn (1993) describe six characteristic features of performance-based assessment as follows:
1. Uses open-ended tasks
2. Focuses on higher order or complex skills
3. Employs context sensitive strategies
4. Often uses complex problems requiring several types of performance and significant student time
5. Consists of either individual or group performance
6. May involve a significant degree of student choice (p. 1211)
There are, however, issues to consider with performance-based assessment such as:
1. Validity, reliability issues
2. Difficult to construct
3. Use of resources and time invested in them
4. A need for serious consideration applied to design and purpose However, this mode of Assessment should be pursued for potential in CRA.
Peer and Self-Assessment
Peer-assessment and self-assessment have potential for assessment that is more learner-centric, flexible, and culturally responsive as these approaches allow pupi8ls to take ownership of their educational progress and assessment, and in a wider sense, involvement and inclusion in society.
Creativity Assessment
Creativity assessment is defined as "producing something that is novel and useful" (Kim & Zabelina, 2015, p. 136). Hempel and Sue-Chan (2010) and Kim and Zabelina (2015) both recommend that including creativity assessment can address cultural bias. Kim and Zabelina also state that "Creativity assessment shows few differences across gender or ethnicity" (p. 136).