Why Culturally Responsive Teaching for English Learners Matters

Culturally Responsive Teaching is a pedagogy that empowers students, especially English learners and dual-language learners socially, intellectually, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to convey knowledge, attitudes, and skills. It helps student’s access strict curriculum, develop advanced academic skills, and see the relevance between what they learn at institutes, schools, colleges, and their lives.

It was first introduced by Dr Gloria Ladson-Billings in 1992 as ‘Culturally Responsive Pedagogy”, and now also known as culturally responsive teaching. This technique plays an important role not only in receiving information and communication, but also in shaping the thinking process of individuals and groups. Moreover, a group of researches has proven that culturally responsive teaching for emergent bilinguals can provide learners with a range of social and cognitive benefits.

Why Use Culturally Responsive Teaching for Emergent Bilinguals?

It’s an ideal way to maximize English learners and dual-learner academic achievement by incorporating their cultural references in the educational environment. It has proven by neuroscience that everyone learns or captures new information quickly when it’s best-connected to what they (learners) already know.

This means, using materials, texts, and examples that draw from students’ cultural norms and contextual knowledge makes learning much easier because it influences students’ existing neural pathways. Moreover, neuroscience has also discovered the brain processing sequence through culturally responsive teaching – For instance, learners (students) who like oral traditions are geared up to learn new things best through storytelling and music.

In this way, when teachers adopt this technique and use rhythm, repetition, movement, and visuals during pedagogy, they’re also strengthening neural pathways for them.

How Culturally Responsive Pedagogy Motivates & Engage Students?

Culturally responsive teaching help students connect their everyday lives with the academic concepts taught by teachers in the classroom. It’s an ideal strategy, which makes learning experiences more meaningful, effective, and appealing for both the teachers and students.

Research conducted by professionals appreciates this idea – Because researchers have found high attendance in the classroom of ethnic studies courses of 1400 high school students. On the other hand, researchers have long argued that failing to validate the value of educational environment or school learning on students’ everyday lives contributes to the lack of engagement and motivation experienced by far too many students.

How Can Teachers Become Culturally Responsive?

Educational institutes help teachers become more culturally responsive in the classroom through professional development and dedicated training.

Actually, the role of teachers in the educational environment varies from country to country. Moreover, different teaching professionals' beliefs may also be different even though they live in the same country. So, no matter in which country you're living in, it is important to understand your student's background that might be totally different from the current geographic location or even your own. In this way, you can excel your culturally responsive teaching skills by attending different development courses to bring out the best in the classroom.

There are currently several teachers who wish to learn this technique, many of whom fund their own professional development training and are keen on evolving their responsive teaching strategies. Savvien Learning Partners offers a Summer Institute as well as a Fall and Spring PLC.

What are 3 Key Benefits of Culturally Responsive Teaching?

1.     Improves Critical Thinking & Problem-Solving Skills

A group of researchers conducted a study on culturally responsive teachers and discloses that, beyond highlighting students’ cultural norms in the classroom or learning environment, these teachers establish students’ awareness of social justice problems encountered in their everyday lives through smart yet project-based activities.

For instance – A case study of 6th & 7th grade math classrooms reveals that, Latino students used traffic stop data to recognize racial profiling in their community and gain a better understanding of difficult math concepts.

Another case study has proven the effort of a student’s group to investigate zoning laws in their society. These students presented their conducted research to the state nominated professionals, which led to the closure of two liquor shops near their school. 

After these studies, researchers consider that grabbing student’s attention towards investigating meaningful community issues is an excellent way to get students to analyze, articulate questions, and generate optimum solutions to challenging yet authentic social problems.

2.    Strengthen Students Racial & Ethnic Identities

Culturally responsive teachers are trained to develop and support student’s ethnic and racial pride in the classroom. One of the studies based on 315 middle and high school students revealed that students under the supervision of such teachers expressed a greater sense of security while describing their racial identity in the learning environment.

3.    Promoting a Sense of Safety

Promoting a sense of safety among students in a culturally responsive pedagogy environment is a major benefit because it directly connects to increases in student’s learning outcomes and academic skills. Numerous studies have shown that culturally responsive teachers cultivate such feelings through various smart techniques, such as demonstrating care, establishing respectful relationships, encouraging socialization, and more with their students or learners.

For example – A student who participated in a culturally responsive science outreach program in a reputed university, reported a greater feeling of security as well as a sense of affirmation for their own and other students.

Conclusion

However, more research is needed on the impact of culturally responsive teaching. Actually, today’s body of evidence included in this article above mainly consists of small to mid-scale studies, some of which examine the impact of culturally responsive pedagogy on English learner or dual-learner student outcomes. Nonetheless, the data we have been able to examine thus far has proven this technique powerful and important to adopt to improve outcomes for our culturally and linguistically diverse students.