Culturally-responsive teaching

Many teachers in the U.S. claim that they are not prepared to teach students who are ethnically diverse (Gay, 2002). Yet, for teaching to be effective, teachers need to have explicit knowledge about cultural diversity. 

Culturally-responsive teaching occurs when the cultural experiences, characteristics and perspectives of students are used in the classroom to better teach the students (Gay, 2002). This can be done by:

• Incorporating materials from different ethnic groups, values, traditions, communication and learning styles. 
• Educators need to learn unbiased, factual information about the ethnic groups that the students identify.
• Educators can learn how contributions from different ethnic groups play a role in the development of their content areas.
• The teacher can align the content standards with cultural diversity so that cultural diversity is being taught alongside the content.
• Include pictures, symbols, artifacts and celebrations to teach about skills and values that learners have in the teacher's classroom.
• Analyze how people from varying cultures are portrayed through movies and the news, as well as other mass media. Many ethnic groups are portrayed incorrectly through mass media, but teachers can still use that incorrect portrayal as a way to have conversations to teach the students critical thinking skills. 

In order to teach about cultural diversity, one needs to learn that culturally responsive teaching is not something that automatically happens because one wants it to, rather teachers need to be patient or put in more effort in their planning and instruction. Teachers who are culturally responsive show to their students that knowledge has consequences. From that, it may obligate the students to take social action to promote justice for all. SLIFE learners benefit from learning that supports their social, emotional and psychological needs, and culturally responsive teaching takes those needs into consideration (Umansky et al., 2018)