What is culturally responsive, relevant, & sustainable pedagogy?

​

A widely used term for cultural considerations in pedagogical practice is culturally responsive teaching. The central focus of culturally responsive teaching is to improve the equity of learning experiences and achievement outcomes for learners who are ethnically, racially, and culturally diverse (Au 2001; Gay 2010; Ladsen 1995). Special concern is often given to marginalized communities by identifying ways to link what students experience at home with what they experience at school.

 

Culturally relevant pedagogy is a related term that proposes educational experiences “must provide a way for students to maintain their cultural integrity while succeeding academically” (Ladsen 1995. P. 476).  Culturally relevant pedagogy also includes a critical component that challenges institutional and systemic inequities (Ladsen 1995; Gay 2010; Paris 2012; Kana‘iaupuni & Ledward 2013). Research and practices in culturally responsive/relevant teaching have yielded further progressive terms and concepts including culturally sustainable pedagogy and culture-based education.  The desired outcomes of each of these theoretical developments can vary and are often dependent upon whether the emphasis is on achievement or equity.  Across this spectrum of ideological positions, I find a common thread of concern: student engagement in learning.

​

The idea of linking students’ lived experiences and schooling is certainly not new.  In Experience and Education (1938), John Dewey described some aspects of responsive and relevant teaching. In his argument for the preeminence of experience, Dewey posed a question; “What avail is it to win prescribed amounts of information about geography and history, to win the ability to read and write, if in the process the individual loses his own soul?” (Dewey 1938, p. 29).  Here Dewey demonstrates that decontextualization produces alienation, a lack of appreciation for information, and ultimately the inability to extract meaning from future experiences.  Dewey's emphasized contextual learning and he argued that educators “should know how to utilize the surroundings, physical and social, that exist so as to extract from them all that they have to contribute to building up experiences that are worthwhile” (Dewey 1938, p. 22). It should be noted that while Dewey’s theoretical perspective elevated social-emotional learning (Williams 2017), these progressive ideas were still largely framed by Eurocentric values which deemed non-Western cultures as socially deficient (Fallace 2010). 
 

Django Paris (2012) traces the progression of cultural and education justice research in Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy: A Needed Change in Stance, Terminology, and Practice. In this work, he examined theorists from the 1970s through 2012.  Paris notes that before this period the prominent perspective in education “viewed the languages, literacies, and cultural ways of being of many students and communities of color as deficiencies to be overcome in learning the demanded and legitimized dominant language, literacy, and cultural ways of schooling” (Paris 2012). In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a conceptual shift from "deficiency" to "difference" in pedagogical and curricular work.  This transition was marked by resource pedagogies that resisted deficit thinking and described learners from nondominant cultural groups as “equal to, but different from, the ways demanded and legitimated in school teaching and learning” (Paris 2012, p. 94).  These differences came to be seen as cultural resources or "funds of knowledge", which teachers could utilize to make connections in the classroom (Coles & Charles 2011; Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez 1992; Paris 2012). 

​

Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995) describes these earlier methods as accommodating toward student culture, but she argued that more efforts were needed to bridge the gap between home and school if social inequities are to be fully addressed.  To this end, she employs the term culturally responsive as “a more dynamic or synergistic relationship between home/community culture and school culture” (Ladson 1995, p. 467).  The funds of knowledge are not just a means to an assimilated end, rather these rich cultural tools can be leveraged (Osorio 2018) from deficit and difference to shared values in the school setting.  For Ladson, these shared values transform the teacher-learner relationship into something more fluid and equitable (Ladson 1995; Wurdeman et. al, 2015).  From this perspective, it is expected that teachers immerse themselves in the communities they serve to demonstrate good faith effort in mutuality.

 

Culturally relevant/responsive teaching values shared knowledge and thereby it is commensurate with dialogical methods in critical pedagogy (Freire, 1971).  However, it should be noted that there has never been unanimity in how the teacher-learner relationship is defined in culturally relevant/responsive teaching.  For Kathryn Au (2001) and others, culturally responsive teaching is described as hybridity, meaning it is a blend of home and school cultures with the typical school and academic setting.  This perspective could lend itself to pushback by some theorists who prioritize cultural sovereignty against hegemonic systems of education (Paris 2012; Kana’iaupuni 2010).  Ladson is emphatic that students’ culture, language, and heritage is valued in the classroom, but the primary concern seems to be an achievement in gaining access to the dominant culture (Ladson 1995; Paris 2012). 

​

This emphasis on empowering students to succeed in the culture of power is also found in the work of Lisa Delpit.  In Other people's children: Cultural conflict in the classroom (1995) Delpit cautions progressive educators and researchers that there are adverse effects of neglecting to provide marginalized students with what she calls codes of power.  By this, she means giving explicit instruction in dominant cultural discourses to ensure that students will be able to succeed in the “real world” which adheres to the rules of the culture of power.  Certainly, both Delpit and Gladson believe in responsive and relevant methods of instruction, but Paris (2012) questions aloud if this “cultural competency” in practice has produced enough critical action to maintain the language, heritage, and community practices of marginalized students. 

​

Paris introduces the term culturally sustaining pedagogy to build on the desired outcomes of responsive and relevant methodologies to ensure a “multiethnic and multilingual present and future” (Paris 2012, p. 95). Paris lauds Gladson’s contribution to cultural and educational justice research, and he describes the development of deficit to difference as a step forward.  His concern is that success in American schooling should not take a back seat to resistance and critical action toward the full realization of cultural pluralism and cultural equality.  This perspective seeks to maintain the alignment and integration of critical pedagogy with culturally responsive, relevant and sustaining objectives.  Paris asserts that culturally sustaining pedagogy furthers the fight against common enemies of the hegemonic hidden curriculum (Delpit 1995) which seeks to create a “monocultural and monolingual society based on White, middle-class norms of language and cultural being (Paris 2012, p. 95). 

 

Achievement, competency, and equity in a multicultural and pluralistic society are commensurate with critical consciousness, humanization, and permanent liberation. Those who are aligned with the central principles of CRT agree that “culturally relevant pedagogy must provide a way for students to maintain their cultural integrity while succeeding academically” (Ladson 1995, p. 476).  Culturally sustaining pedagogy seeks to extend the outcomes to include cultural equity (Paris 2012). 

​

​

​