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Academic Success/ Student Learning
Not to confuse academic success with test taking, Ladson-Billing converted to using Student Learning, providing the following example for clarification.
"Imagine a student entering a 5th-grade classroom at the beginning of the school year reading at the 2nd-grade level. The dedicated and hard-working teacher provides plenty of one-on-one instruction, supplementary materials, and extracurricular learning opportunities. Through hard work and consistency, the student leaves this classroom in the spring reading at the 4th-grade level-very proud of what he's accomplished. However, when the student takes the spring state test, he is still testing a year below grade level. According to the external measure, he is performing "below standard," but he, his parents, and his teacher are extremely pleased with his learning. According to culturally relevant pedagogy, this teacher exemplifies what we mean by student learning" (Ladson-Billings, 2021, p. 5).
Cultural Competence
According to Ladson-billings, this is the most misunderstood of the three propositions. She poses, given the use of adjacent terms (e.g. culturally competent nursing, counseling and policing) across multiple disciplines, cultural competence has been not always applied correctly. Cultural competence not only means honoring the language and cultural traditions of you class and surrounding community, but also...
"...an understanding of teachers' responsibility to help students gain fluency and facility in at least one other culture...White, mainstream students are not exempt from the need to develop cultural competence. If they are to operate in a diverse, globally interconnected, democratic society, they need to know much more than their own culture" (Ladson-Billings, 2021, p. 5).
Sociopolitical /critical Consciousness
While cultural competence is the most misunderstood, critical consciousness is the most underutilized out of fear of being "too political".
"The political work of the classroom is not to be confused with partisanship. We are not asking students to align with political parties or taken-for-granted ideologies (e.g., liberal, conservative, etc.). We also are not asking student to advance our agendas. This is the place where teachers get into trouble...Student problems may seem trivial, but the may be just the vehicle for exploring bigger ideas" (Ladson-Billings, 2021, p. 7).
Ladson-Billings continues with an example of what critical consciousness looks like in the classroom.
"In a high school classroom, a student complained about the school's "hat rule." That rule declared that no students were permitted to wear a hat inside the building. One Black male student complained that the hat rule was not applied fairly. According to the student, school officials quickly glossed over hat-wearing by White students-particularly those who were perceived to be high achievers. On the other hand, the student though Black student were harshly sanctioned for violating the rule. The teacher asked the student to present evidence of his claim. His data were purely anecdotal, so together the teacher and the class developed a systematic approach to test the hypothesis that Black male students were sanctioned more harshly for violating the hat rule. The students were divided into four groups to survey each class - freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors. They constructed a survey that allowed them to collect demographic data - class, gender, race/ethnicity, academic track. Then they asked respondents to the survey two questions: Have you ever been stopped for violating the hat rule? If yes, what happened. Once the students gathered data from what they determined to be a representative sample, they analyzed the data by class, gender, race/ethnicity, and academic track. The analysis revealed that Black male student on lower tracks were much more likely to be stopped for wearing a hat inside the building, and when they were stopped, they were more likely to be given a detention or in some cases to be sent to the vice principal. The student compiled their findings and came up with a set of recommendations to make this part of the discipline policy more equitable. The student presented their research findings to the principal, and the principal shared the report with the teachers. The school decided to administer the hat rule more uniformly and fairly" (Ladson-Billings, 2021, p. 7).
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