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Three Components of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Academic Achievement
Often the term "academic achievement" is followed up with notion of oppressive standardized tests, retention of certain groups of students, stripped curricula, and intimidation by the students, teachers, and parents. In this text, it is preferred that the term "student learning" is used to describe student's ability to learn and perform as a result of pedagogical interactions with skilled teachers. In this context, "good teachers" are those who understand that the cultivation and intellectual growth of students is the main focus of schooling, and through this the students will gain knowledge, self-esteem, as well as self-control. Teachers who practice student learning go forth by criticizing and scrutinizing given curriculum, rather than just passively passing on uncontested information to students. In addition, student learning practices include in-depth discussion, showing imagery, symbolism and cultural relevance to students, opposed to just listing assigned reading. Student learning requires that large concepts be broken down into smaller parts to insure understanding and retention of knowledge. In addition, long term academic goals rather than short term are stressed and shared with the students to show the importance of the information they are learning, and how it will benefit them in the future.
Cultural Competence
Cultural competence is often the most difficult concept to present to teachers. Cultural competence, as often described in the fields of counseling, social work, medicine, etc., refers to the act of helping the dominant culture group members become more skillful in reading the cultural messages of their clients. In addition to those skills, cultural competence in the realm of teaching includes helping students recognize and honor their own cultural beliefs and practices while acquiring access to the wider culture. Here they are likely to have an opportunity to improve their socioeconomic status and begin making informed decisions about the lives they wish to lead. An additional focus of cultural competence for teachers is to improve the lives of the student, family, and community they serve. Teachers who foster cultural competence work back and forth between the lives of their students and the life of school to help expose students to culture that oppressed them.
Sociopolitical Consciousness
When dealing with sociopolitical consciousness, teachers must first educate themselves about both the local and sociopolitical issues of their school community and larger sociopolitical issues that impinge upon their students' lives. They must realize that race, gender, and class often reflect the economic disparities that they see in their classrooms. It is important that these issues and disparities are incorporated into their ongoing teaching, which will help students use the various skills they learn to better understand and critique their social position and context.
1Source: Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). Yes, but how do we do it. Practicing culturally relevant pedagogy. In J. Landsman and C. W. Lewis (Eds). White teachers/diverse classrooms (pp. 29-42). Sterling, VA: Stylus |
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| Comments posted for this article: 18 |
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I consider it very important to make lessons culturally relavant to a particular group of students. Therefore the educator must understand the student background to associate the lesson with the students. In current student lingo this is "keeping it real". |
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Posted on: December 1, 2012 5:36 am
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This article is very good to me. As a teacher it is important to engage your students with culturally relevant material. We often discuss that we would meet our students needs for assignments that match the cultures in our classroom but, I feel it benefits our students to discuss cultures that may not be included in our classrooms as well. |
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Posted on: February 13, 2013 9:59 pm
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This article effectively breaks down three very heated current discussion topics, and I believe it sheds an appropriate light to all of the areas. For academic achievement, I think we need to spend the time developing a standardized grading system that reflects subjectivity. It will be difficult, but simple multiple choice tests cannot be how we continue to assess our students. They clearly need to remain an aspect, but a determination of educational level cannot be found something that has the risk of guessing. Cultural competence is also extremely important in our ever diversifying nation. I think the best way to combat these issues to have professional development days that discuss and educate teachers on the different cultures represented in the respective schools. If there are teachers of those cultures, they could lead the discussion and provide personal insight. Lastly, sociopolitical consciousness is extremely important as well. This has an influence on every aspect of the classroom: students' home lives, the availability of materials, quality of building, quality of support and technology, etc. The best way for teachers to combat this is to have real conversations with kids in the classroom. When the topics of racism or sexism arise, the class should discuss and not shy away. This will help students be more aware in their own lives |
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Posted on: February 16, 2013 11:14 pm
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I agree that academic achievement is not just standardized testing and teachers focusing on only academic testing and not all sorts of growth. I think teachers should not just teach the curriculum they are required to teach but to teach students self-control, self-worth, and knowledge in social and life skills. Cultural competence is about helping cultural students to understand and honor their own cultural values and beliefs in the classroom. In order for teachers to do this they need to first learn the students' cultural values and understand the importance of them. The teacher needs to let the student show their culture in their learning styles. I agree with the article that teachers need to understand the social issues that are going on in the community to help them understand where their student's families are coming from. I think teachers should take time in the morning or afternoon to go over in simple words community news with the whole class. This will get them to start thinking about their thoughts and place in the community at a young age. We will talk about all the jobs that are lost or hired and so on. |
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Posted on: February 17, 2013 2:28 pm
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Awesome. |
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Posted on: October 20, 2014 9:29 pm
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This article addresses several areas that are considered hot topics in education today. We currently judge students heavily on the scores they make on standardized tests, but often those tests do not show or measure what the students truly know. Also, there are things that can't be tested in a multiple choice assessment. Our county is currently moving toward performance based assessments, but again, the score will be determined by a person, and there is no way that a standard answer can be given. Teaching social studies allows for me to incorporate more information on cultural competence, especially in world geography type classes. Both cultural competence and Sociopolitical consciousness can be difficult to teach in young ages, or in less diverse places, because the students have never experienced lives different from their own.
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Posted on: January 27, 2015 7:35 pm
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I felt that this article was very relevant to the issues we face in the classroom today. If we are to prepare our students to be successful and productive citizens who are culturally responsible, this practice has to start in the classroom. |
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Posted on: February 3, 2015 3:27 pm
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I agree with this article. Cultural awareness and integration into the classroom is very important. I think another important factor in the cultural aspect of academics is avoiding culture-specific questions. Students only familiar with the city may not understand the purpose of comparing the height of a silo to the height of a barn because they are hung up on its function. |
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Posted on: February 18, 2015 3:23 pm
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I agree with this article because schools do put a lot of focus on grades and standards. I believe that teachers should just try to teach to the best of their ability and let the data speck for itself. Students need to also become familiar with other things in life besides test scores. Different cultures, beliefs, and values need to come into play for this changing economy. |
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Posted on: February 20, 2015 2:14 pm
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I agree with this case study. I will utilize this information once I become a teacher.
I enjoyed reading this idea.
I will use this in the future for sure!
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Posted on: March 1, 2015 11:08 pm
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I work at a school where the majority of students are Hispanic. This is a great article and I agree with a lot of your points. |
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Posted on: March 10, 2015 2:08 pm
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Great! |
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Posted on: March 15, 2015 11:36 pm
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This is a great article for teachers who have culturally diverse classrooms or not. I believe it is important to teach lessons that are culturally relevant. It is important as an educator to know some culture background of students in their classrooms. This help you to incorporate cultural importance to students as well as teach others something they may have not known before. |
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Posted on: October 1, 2015 8:15 pm
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Cultural competence is very important to me and I hope to bring that to my classroom |
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Posted on: October 13, 2016 1:02 pm
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Very important to new teachers in the classroom. |
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Posted on: October 14, 2016 7:48 pm
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Great post and tons of importance in the class room. It is often forgotten that teachers are cultural leaders and mediators in a way. Teachers must be culturally responsive to all students. |
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Posted on: October 16, 2016 2:12 pm
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Thank you for clarifying this topic. |
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Posted on: March 4, 2017 2:55 am
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I think that it is important to acknowledge and respect the cultural differences of the students. Incorporating different aspects of various cultures is vital in order to have a culturally responsive classroom. For example, in a Math class, you could create word problems that represent students from different cultures such as Jose, Mohammed, and Bob. |
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Posted on: October 8, 2017 3:00 am
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