Tipping the Scales Toward Culturally Responsive Teaching: Teacher Readiness for Accommodative, Biography-Driven Instruction

Abstract

Though many teachers agree with the overarching tenets of culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) or culturally responsive teaching (CRT), they struggle to know how to apply such frameworks in their classrooms. Some educators are unsure how to address the multifaceted needs of classroom communities that reflect multiple races, ethnicities, and countries of origin.Other teachers operate from a deficit perspective, in which a learner's perceived gaps in knowledge or skill are emphasized, with little to no regard for the gifts, experiences, and talents he or she brings. To address the needs of both kinds of teachers, Herrera (2010, 2016) proposed Biography-Driven Instruction (BDI), a communicative/cognitive instructional method that supports educators to make the curriculum relevant, accessible, and rigorous for all students.This qualitative case study explored the perspectives of four elementary teachers who implemented BDI. Using semi-structured interviews, videos of classroom instruction, and student artifacts and debriefings of learning, this study explored the espoused and practical readiness of teachers to accommodate the assets and needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Teachers’ Perceptions of Immigrant Students and Families: A Qualitative Study

“…Faced with this problem, educational policies are required to develop initiatives with immigrant families to increase their collaboration, offer them information in their mother tongue, and help them and train them in whatever they need, paying special attention to learning the host language [38,39]. Based on the research results and coinciding with similar studies [26,[61][62][63][64], we propose teaching in a culturally relevant manner This pedagogical concept uses the experiences, characteristics, perspectives, and customs of immigrant students as an instrument for better teaching at school [25,26,62,64].…”

A science teacher’s experiences when fostering intercultural competence among students in multilingual classrooms: a narrative study

“…However, few instructional models give speci c examples or strategies that foster the development of intercultural competence among students (Huang 2014). Furthermore, despite the fact that student populations continue to increase in cultural and linguistic diversity, these models do not attend to the role that ethno-racial-linguistic diversity (Herrera 2010) plays in shaping the social ecology of classrooms or the rami cations of not attending its salience (Morales and Raible 2021).…”

Exploring heterosexism through participatory theater: An experiment

“…I envisioned the course as an experiment in enacting aspects of Freire's critical pedagogy, positioning “authority as dialectical” and positioning myself as a researcher and learner (Souto‐Manning, 2010, p. 12). In such an educational space, students are invited to “think critically about subject matter, doctrines, the learning process itself, and society” (Shor, 1993, p. 24), and instructional strategies “move away from pre‐set, reductionistic taxonomies [often] … used in classroom practice” (Herrera, 2010, p. 53). Rather, “teachers pose problems derived from student life … in a mutually created dialogue” (Shor, 1993, p. 24), and students' life histories become an element of the course content.…”

“…The theoretical framework for designing and teaching the course drew on scholarship from multiple perspectives, including literacy education (Freire, 1983;Herrera, 2010;Morrell, 2002), social justice pedagogies (Burke et al, 2016;Powell & Serriere, 2013;Sensoy & DiAngelo, 2011;Shor, 1993), the arts (Boal, 1985(Boal, , 1995(Boal, , 2002Rozansky & Aagesen, 2010), and activism studies (Mutnick, 2006;O'Dair, 2003). Furthermore, the framework for the project adapted and operationalized selected aspects of pedagogical and artistic practice, such as experimentation, problem-posing, and the use of aesthetic lenses to view cultural concepts and teaching and learning processes.…”