Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: Engaging Students through Relevant Teaching

On September 27, 2014, the Community College of Baltimore County-Dundalk (CCBC) held its first ever Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) Conference to discuss the issues that educators face when engaging minority youth in a school curriculum that has traditionally been Anglo-centered. The conference’s keynote speaker, Gloria Ladson-Billings, argued that CRT involves three components:

1. An emphasis on academic achievement and student learning
Teachers should focus on curriculum depth instead of coverage. Furthermore, teachers should understand that a high failure rate is not equal to rigor. Instead of being thought of as a sieve, teaching should be likened to a casting a net, whereby you can help everyone be successful instead of a select few. Class curriculums should therefore engage students of all cultures by relating activities to students' own backgrounds and including information that is relevant to the cultures and ethnicities represented in the classroom.

2. Cultural competence
Curriculum should be firmly grounded in students’ own culture, while encouraging students to become fluent in at least one other culture. The classroom should allow students to develop multi-cultural competence, not just competence in one culture.

3. Socio-political consciousness
School should not just be a place to acquire skills to get a job. Instead, it should also be a place where children learn to think for themselves and a place where our democracy is preserved by empowering students to think critically about the political and social issues around them. 

Today, CRT is more important than ever before. In community colleges alone, there have been an increase in the number of non-traditional students (40% of students are >25 years old and 1/3 attend part time) combined with an increase in the number of ethnic minority students (50% of students).

CRT should not only be employed in the classroom. It is also important at all levels of the school system. Administration, staff, and faculty should all learn to be culturally responsive in their efforts with minority youth. CCBC has begun to use a culturally responsive training model that echoes this notion, and it has been well received by faculty. Results have shown that their program has decreased the gap in academic achievement outcomes in the classroom by 10-20%. Hopefully more schools will begin to employ this method in the future and become able to better meet their students’ needs.

Suggested reading for more information on CRT: Dr. Ladson-Billing's book The Dreamkeepers