Culturally-Responsive Pedagogy

As an institution focused on access, we invite you to spend time reflecting on how your personal and professional experiences and origins shape the way you teach and work with your students. We value what you bring to our students, and also want to lend to you our experiences in creating a teaching culture that supports diversity, equity, and inclusion. To this end, we believe in the body of literature supporting the use of Culturally-Responsive Pedagogy (CRP), and the work of Gloria Ladsen-Billings, among others. CRP centers around the notion that we can, and should include our student’s cultural references in all aspects of our teaching--from the design of a course, to our instruction, and to the language we use with our students. We offer the following suggestions to incorporate CRP into your classroom:

• Names. Names are important and so are the way they are used and pronounced. Always use a student’s name in all your interactions and pay attention to their pronunciation (or just ask), and also to any nicknames they use that you could honor.

• Make the connection. Check in with your students and offer a phone call, Zoom, and/or support when a student seems to fall behind. Individually reach out to your students--you will be amazed at their response!

• Progressive stack. If you summarize the Discussion or an Activity for the week in an Announcement, take the time to highlight the contribution of students who may belong to a marginalized group or that seem to be more hesitant to bring their full selves to the class. We want you to recognize everyone, and this type of “stacking” is a subtle, yet impactful gesture to those students who have been traditionally overlooked.

• Multimodal learning. Consider all the different ways a student can demonstrate mastery and find ways to accept these differences in your assessment strategy. It may mean that you modify an assignment description to also include alternative forms of submission such as a storytelling video, a podcast, an infographic, or other media besides a standard written document. The way you learn and process information may be very different than your students'!

• High Expectations with Compassion. We want you to promote a healthy sense of accountability with your student by holding them to high standards with empathy and compassion.

Want to learn more about CRP? Here are some resources for you:

• Ladson-Billings's webpage on CRP: https://www.brown.edu/academics/education-alliance/teaching-diverse-learners/strategies-0/culturally-responsive-teaching-0#ladson-billings

• Visual: CRTL standards developed by Professor Keisha Rembert: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p4_9f8iz37Vp9__etkz_VUeFjynu1n6d/view?usp=sharing

• Article: “Celebrating Difference: Best Practices in Culturally Responsive Teaching Online”: https://nl.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=124829497&site=ehost-live&scope=site

• Video webinar: “Culturally Responsive Teaching Online”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_ezA_VKub8

• Rhodes, C. M., & Schmidt, S. W. (2018, November). Culturally responsive teaching in the online classroom. eLearn Magazine. https://elearnmag.acm.org/archive.cfm?aid=3274756 This article discusses how the Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) framework can be used to incorporate cultural identities of adult learners into the online classroom. As you read, consider how you may already incorporate elements of the motivational framework described by the authors.