LibGuides: Amplifying Voices in Discourse (AVID): Culturally Responsive Teaching

Brief Overview

Culturally Responsive Teaching
Entry from the Encyclopedia of the Social and Cultural Foundations of Education

In the News

New America | Understanding Culturally Responsive Teaching
College of Education News: Ask the Expert | What is Culturally Responsive Teaching? 'Teaching that Acknowledges, Attends to and Leverages the Cultures, Values and Ways of Knowing Young People,' Say Assistant Professors Chandra Alston, Michelle Falter, and
Education Week | Why a Culturally Responsive Curriculum Works
Diverse Issues in Higher Education | A Call for Multiculturalism in Higher Education
UW College of Education Spotlight | Geneva Gay: A Legacy of Elevating Multicultural Education to Prominence
Faculty Focus | Five Essential Strategies to Embrace Culturally Responsive Teaching
Faculty Focus | Culturally Responsive Teaching and UDL
Becoming a More Inclusive Educator Will Energise You and Your Students

Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice

Culturally Responsive Teaching by Geneva Gay
ISBN: 9780807758762
Publication Date: 2018-01-26
Geneva Gay is renowned for her contributions to multicultural education, particularly as it relates to curriculum design, professional learning, and classroom instruction. Gay has made many important revisions to keep her foundational, award-winning text relevant for today's diverse student population, including: new research on culturally responsive teaching, a focus on a broader range of racial and ethnic groups, and consideration of additional issues related to early childhood education. Combining insights from multicultural education theory with real-life classroom stories, this book demonstrates that all students will perform better on multiple measures of achievement when teaching is filtered through students' own cultural experiences. This perennial bestseller continues to be the go-to resource for teacher professional learning and preservice courses. While retaining its basic organization and structure, the Third Edition features: New research that validates the positive effects of culturally responsive teaching. Examples that broaden the racial and ethnic groups that can benefit from culturally responsive teaching. More information on the needs and benefits of culturally responsive teaching with young children. More attention to the quality of life for students of color in colleges and universities. The addition of Practice Possibilities at the end of chapters that describe how culturally responsive teaching can be implemented.

University of South Dakota Dean, Dr. Easton-Brooks, interviews Dr. Geneva Gay

Dr. Geneva Gay responds to the question, "Why is it important for faculty to employ culturally responsive teaching practices?"

Dr. Valerie Kinloch interviews Dr. Geneva Gay

Recommended Books

Care and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in Online Settings by Lydia Kyei-Blankson (Editor); Joseph Blankson (Editor); Esther Ntuli (Editor) As enrollment numbers continue to grow for online education classes, it is imperative instructors be prepared to teach students from diverse groups. Students who engage in learning in classrooms where their backgrounds are recognized and the instruction is welcoming and all-inclusive perform better. Individuals who teach in online settings must endeavor to create caring and culturally appropriate environments to encourage learning among all students irrespective of their demographic composition. Care and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in Online Settings is a collection of innovative research on the incorporation of culturally sensitive teaching practices in online classrooms, and how these methods have had an impact on student learning. While highlighting topics including faculty teaching, restorative justice, and nontraditional students, this book is ideally designed for instructors, researchers, instructional designers, administrators, policymakers, and students seeking current research on online educators incorporating care and culturally responsive pedagogy into practice.
ISBN: 9781522578024
Publication Date: 2019-04-19
Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning in Higher Education by Lucretia Octavia Tripp (Editor); Rhonda M. Collier (Editor) As diversity continues to increase in classrooms, teachers need to be culturally aware and sensitive in order to ensure student success. It is important to understand what best practices are available to support this ever-increasing awareness of learning to respect those who are different and to understand how this is key to orchestrating a series of social interactions and social contexts. Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning in Higher Education is an essential scholarly reference source that provides comprehensive research on culturally responsive teaching and the impact of culture on teaching and contextualizes issues related to cultural diversity and inequity in education. Featuring a broad range of topics such as gender bias, STEM, and social media, the goal of the book is to build transformative educators and administrators equipped to prepare 21st century global citizens. It is ideal for faculty, teachers, administrators, principals, curriculum developers, course designers, professionals, researchers, and students seeking to improve teaching methodologies and faculty development.
ISBN: 9781522599890
Publication Date: 2019-09-20
Culturally Responsive Education in the Classroom by Adeyemi Stembridge This exciting book helps educators translate the concept of equity into the context of pedagogy in the K-12 classroom. Providing a practice-oriented framework for understanding what equity entails for both teachers and learners, this book clarifies the theoretical context for equity and shares rich teaching strategies across a range of content areas and age groups. Unpacking six themes to understand Culturally Responsive Education (CRE), this powerful book helps teachers incorporate equity into behaviors, environments, and meaningful learning opportunities. Culturally Responsive Education in the Classroomprovides specific, practice-based examples to help readers develop a culturally responsive pedagogical mindset for closing equity gaps in student achievement.
ISBN: 9781138339385
Publication Date: 2019-12-16
Standing Together by Beverly J. Klug The majority of American Indian students attend public schools in the United States. However, education mandated for American Indian students since the 1800s has been primarily education for assimilation, with the goal of eliminating American Indian cultures and languages. Indeed, extreme measures were taken to ensure Native students would "act white" as a result of their involvement with Western education. Today's educational mandates continue a hegemonic "one-size-fits-all" approach to education. This is in spite of evidence that these approaches have rarely worked for Native students and have been extremely detrimental to Native communities. This book provides information about the importance of teaching American Indian students by bridging home and schools, using students' cultural capital as a springboard for academic success. Culturally Responsive Pedagogy is explored from its earliest beginnings following the 1928 Meriam Report. Successful education of Native students depends on all involved and respect for the voices of American Indians in calling for education that holds high expectations for native students and allows them to be grounded in their cultures and languages.
ISBN: 9781610487856
Publication Date: 2012-11-28
Culturally Responsive Approaches to Evaluation by Jill Anne Chouinard; Fiona Cram Evaluators have always worked in diverse communities, and the programs they evaluate are designed to address often intractable socio-political and economic issues. Evaluations that explicitly aim to be more responsive to culture and cultural context are, however, a more recent phenomenon. This book utilizes a conceptual framework that foregrounds culture in social inquiry, and then uses that framework to analyze empirical studies across three distinct cultural domains of evaluation practice (Western, Indigenous and international development). The authors provide a comparative analysis of these studies and discuss lessons drawn from them in order to help evaluators extend their current thinking and practice. They conclude with an agenda for future research.  
ISBN: 9781506368535
Publication Date: 2019-10-30
Culturally Responsive Cognitive Behavioral Therapy by Gayle Iwamasa; Pamela A. Hays This volume shows mental health providers how to integrate cultural factors into cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). Contributing authors describe the application of CBT with clients of diverse cultures, and discusses how therapists can refine CBT to increase its effectiveness with clients from a variety of cultural backgrounds. They examine the unique characteristics of, and the use of CBT with various racial, ethnic, and religious minority groups in the United States including Latinx, Asian Americans, African Americans, American Indians, Alaska natives, Arabs, and Orthodox Jews. Strategies for using CBT with older adults, individuals with disabilities, and LGBTQ clients are also examined. A chapter on culturally responsive CBT clinical supervision closes this volume. This second edition includes fully-updated demographic information, a greater emphasis on culture-specific assessments, and a chapter on using CBT with clients of South Asian descent.
ISBN: 9781433830167
Publication Date: 2018-11-01
Integrating Multiculturalism and Intersectionality into the Psychology Curriculum by Jasmine A. Mena; Kathryn Quina Multicultural and intersectional aspects of identity are crucial components of human psychology. Yet, properly teaching and accounting for these factors in psychology courses can be a challenge. This comprehensive book provides instructors with practical guidance for incorporating multicultural perspectives into their courses and creating more welcoming and inclusive classrooms. The contributors are experienced instructors of graduate and undergraduate courses who describe effective teaching strategies, activities, and assignments that encourage students to contribute their viewpoints, learn from each other, challenge their own biases, and expand their worldviews. Chapters examine specific sociocultural groups based on gender, ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic and ability status. Authors discuss these topics using an intersectional approach, recognizing that individuals are complex beings who are members of multiple groups and whose overlapping identities influence their development, social relationships, and worldviews. Other chapters offer recommendations for integrating multiculturalism into core psychology courses, including introduction to psychology classes, which are most undergraduate students' only exposure to psychology.
ISBN: 9781433830075
Publication Date: 2019
What Is It about Me You Can′t Teach? by Eleanor Renée Rodriguez; James A. Bellanca; Deborah Rosalia Esparza Updated with new research, this powerful book shows how to raise student achievement by upholding high expectations and supporting today's standards, while teaching with cultural responsiveness.
ISBN: 9781506345642
Publication Date: 2016-06-23

Recommended Articles

Cole, C. E. (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogy in higher education: Teaching so that Black Lives Matter. Equality, Diversity & Inclusion, 36(8), 736 - 750 The purpose of this paper is to show how the principles of Black Lives Matter can be used to enact a culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) in higher education settings, particularly in small colleges that serve significant populations of students who are underrepresented in higher education.
Heitner, K. L., & Jennings, M. (2016). Culturally responsive teaching knowledge and practices of online faculty. Online Learning, 20(4), 54 - 78 Cultural differences between faculty and their students can create important challenges that affect the quality and efficacy of online teaching and learning. The objectives of this study were to: (a) create and pilot test an assessment for online faculty to measure culturally responsive teaching knowledge (CRT) and culturally responsive educational practices (CREP) in teaching and advising students of color, military students, LGBTQ students, religious minority students, and international students; (b) describe participants' CRT knowledge, value, and CREP; and (c) examine differences between their knowledge and their practices.
Woodley, X., Hernandex, C., Parra, J., & Negash, B. (2017). Celebrating difference: Best practices in culturally responsive teaching online. TechTrends, 61(5), 470 - 478 Culturally responsive teaching and design practices flip the online classroom by creating an environment that acknowledges, celebrates, and builds upon the cultural capital that learners and teachers bring to the online classroom. Challenges exist in all phases of online course design, including the ability to create online courses that reflect the instructor’s commitment to inclusive excellence, diversity, and social justice. Designing an online environment that supports all learners regardless of their backgrounds is important in their future success as professionals; thus, it is important for faculty to design courses with all students in mind. The purpose of this article is to share best practices in the design of culturally and linguistically responsive online courses that support the culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students we serve. Based on Gay’s (2010) culturally responsive teaching practices, this article provides examples of online activities that are validating; comprehensive; multi-dimensional; empowering; transformative, and emancipatory.
Hutchison, L., & McAlister-Shields, L. (2020). Culturally responsive teaching: Its application in higher education environments. Education Sciences, 10 The application of culturally responsive teaching (CRT) in this article is used to provide a background into the instructional concept of CRT in higher educational settings and to provide examples for classroom pedagogical practice. This article provides instructional approaches that can be used in higher education classes to promote a cultural context to engage preservice teaching candidates who are seeking initial certification to become teachers-of-record and graduate-level teachers who are certified to understand and embrace the intersection of race, gender, religion, and regional cultures that contribute to identity. This article outlines instructional activities that can be used by faculty in higher education programs to assist their students with learning to co-construct culturally responsive lessons. This type of instruction should lead to a process in which faculty in higher educational settings can assist their preservice teacher candidates and graduate-level students in understanding the community in which they will serve or currently serve and to bring the funds of knowledge of their students into positive and productive learning environments.
Liao, W., Xuewei, X., & Qin, K. (2021). Learning to become culturally responsive teacher educators in an internationalized doctoral course: A video-cued interpretive study. Teaching and Teacher Education, 102. Using a video-cued interpretive research methodology, this study examines how eight doctoral students learn to become culturally responsive teacher educators in a foundation course in one of the first international teacher education Ph.D. programs in mainland China. We identified three patterns undergirding the participants’ learning experiences: (a) engaging with teacher education knowledge from culturally plural perspectives; (b) honing strategies for creating culturally inclusive learning experiences; and (c) developing asset-based views toward cultural diversity. These patterns constitute a conceptualization of the process of learning to become culturally responsive teacher educators and suggest practical implications for preparing culturally responsive teacher educators.
Pang, V. O., Alvarado, J. L., Preciado, J. R., & Schleicher, A. R. (2021). Culturally relevant education: Think local within a holistic orientation. Multicultural Perspectives, 23(1), 3 - 16 Students bring valuable cultural ways of knowing and worldviews to the classroom. Teachers who build on student cultures are able to motivate and make learning more meaningful. We believe that teachers should Think Local within a holistic orientation to create a student-centered and culture-centered education that arises out of student cultural knowledge, life experiences, and belief systems. Like the Farm to Table movement in agriculture, teachers need to think about reaching students using a Think Local perspective. We highlight three examples of culturally relevant programs and how their holistic programs are based on thinking local. From these three cases, we recommend that teachers consider utilizing five cultural competencies that will assist them in integrating the local expertise of students into schooling.
Maginess, T., & MacKenzie, A. (2018). Achieving moralised compassion in higher education. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice, 6,(3), 42 - 48 This paper engages with a philosophical conception of moralised compassion. This involves imaginative dwelling on the condition of the other person, an active regard for her good, and a view of her as a fellow human being. We will suggest that we ought, following Schopenhauer, to cultivate moralised compassion if we are to have just relations and just institutions. This will enable us to consider compassion not just as a private interpersonal value, but as a broader institutional and global value. Many universities still proclaim a three-stranded mission: to educate for personal development, to create public/societal benefit, and to prepare students for the labour market. There is an emerging set of voices critically questioning what they see as an overly dominant obsession with training students to serve the economy, and that universities are increasingly focused on the private, rather than the public good. We will reflect on meanings and enactments of compassion within the 'engaged' university by asking a number of related questions. We will explore how universities can offer leadership on moralised compassion, both at an individual and institutional level to their students, and how teachers can offer a more culturally sustaining pedagogy to their students, which values and defends cultural pluralism and cultural equality.
Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93 - 97 Seventeen years ago Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995) published the landmark article "Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy," giving a coherent theoretical statement for resource pedagogies that had been building throughout the 1970s and 1980s. I, like countless teachers and university-based researchers, have been inspired by what it means to make teaching and learning relevant and responsive to the languages, literacies, and cultural practices of students across categories of difference and (in)equality. Recently, however, I have begun to question if the terms "relevant" and "responsive" are really descriptive of much of the teaching and research founded upon them and, more importantly, if they go far enough in their orientation to the languages and literacies and other cultural practices of communities marginalized by systemic inequalities to ensure the valuing and maintenance of our multiethnic and multilingual society. In this essay, I offer the term and stance of "culturally sustaining pedagogy" as an alternative that, I believe, embodies some of the best research and practice in the resource pedagogy tradition and as a term that supports the value of our multiethnic and multilingual present and future. Culturally sustaining pedagogy seeks to perpetuate and foster--to sustain--linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling. In the face of current policies and practices that have the explicit goal of creating a monocultural and monolingual society, research and practice need equally explicit resistances that embrace cultural pluralism and cultural equality.
Lawrence, A. (2020). Teaching as dialogue: An emerging model of culturally responsive online pedagogy. Journal of Online Learning Research, 6(1), 5 - 33 Despite the preponderance of online learning in K-12 public schools, still little is known about what constitutes good online teaching. The purpose of this interpretivist investigation was to learn about some of the ways in which culturally responsive teaching occurs online. This study focused on the practices of four full-time online high school teachers. Using the methods of grounded theory research, the author analyzed data generated through observations of online courses, interviews with teachers, and teacher-written narratives in order to learn how four instructors practiced culturally responsive online pedagogy in one state-supported online program. Results indicated that the teachers engaged in frequent and ongoing dialogue with their students. The teachers used multiple strategies to get to know their students, to build class community, to adapt instruction to students' learning needs and preferences, and to make learning relevant. Teachers also discussed contextual factors that impacted their practice. However, some characteristics of culturally responsive pedagogy, including infusing students' cultures into the curriculum and helping students to challenge power and hegemony were not identified.
Cowde C. (2021). Teaching with intent: Applying culturally responsive teaching to library instruction. portal: Libraries & the Academy, 21(2). Despite increasingly diverse classrooms, librarians may teach to the middle without considering the divergent experiences of the actual students in the class. Additionally, the centrality of whiteness in academia and librarianship may contribute to a lack of inclusivity in the library instruction classroom. Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) provides a framework for realizing inclusivity for culturally diverse students. This article presents theoretically grounded, practical applications of CRT for the library instruction classroom within three suggested areas for improvement: preparation, communication, and facilitation.
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Magliocca, A. L. (2018). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. Journal of Social Studies Research, 42(3), 307 - 310 What are we seeking to sustain? This is a fundamental question that consistently appears in the edited volume Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World by Django Paris and H. Samy Alim. It is a question that helps to characterize the diverse nature of the American classroom as demographically and culturally unique. The vagueness of this question, in fact, unearths the very complexity of the answer, as each classroom community and individual student within it will require a different response. Thereby, the very pluralization of the word ‘pedagogy’ gives the reader insight into the dynamic nature of the text as an example of the paradigm shift being presented. Culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) reimagines approaches to multicultural education emphasizing a combination of identity exploration and affirmation with youth agency.
Caraballo, L., Martinez, D. C., Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (2020). Culturally sustaining pedagogies in the current moment: A conversation with Django Paris and H. Samy Alim. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 63(6), 697 - 701. This department explores how teachers can sustain students’ multilingual literacies and reimagine literacy learning across multiple contexts in conversation with researchers, practitioners, and communities.

Schedule of Resource Discussions

AVID Presents Culturally Responsive Teaching: A Discussion | Session 1

Our first session will cover the introductory sessions and Chapter One of Dr. Geneva Gay's renowned text, Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice (3rd Ed.).

Date: Thursday, May 13th

Time: 1:00 pm PST

Click here to register for this resource discussion.

AVID Presents Culturally Responsive Teaching: A Discussion | Session 2

Our second session will cover Chapters Two through Four of Dr. Geneva Gay's renowned text, Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice (3rd Ed.).

Date: Wednesday, June 2nd

Time: 1:00 pm PST

Click here to register for this resource discussion.

AVID Presents Culturally Responsive Teaching: A Discussion | Session 3

Our third session will cover Chapters Five through Eight of Dr. Geneva Gay's renowned text, Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice (3rd Ed.).

Date: Monday, June 14th

Time: 1:00 pm PST

Click here to register for this resource discussion.