Lindsay, L. (2021). Black Girls Create: Developing a culturally responsive maker program for Black girls. Afterschool Matters, 34, 40–47.
This research paper by Lindsay focuses on the value of implementing a culturally responsive maker course for Black female students. The study’s central thesis is that using the Black Girls Create program in the educational curriculum helps increase awareness about the topic and increases maker skills “to design and create cultural artifacts and to conduct digital fabrication demonstrations” (p. 40).
The source meets the relevance criteria since it was written in 2021. The work is done through culturally responsive educational theory and research perspectives. The limitation is focusing only on Black girls and their interest in STEM. The source can be used to help build a program to study African culture and history.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2021). I’m here for the hard re-set: Post pandemic pedagogy to preserve our culture. Equity & Excellence in Education, 54(1), 68–78.
The article by Ladson-Billings focuses on revising the educational program after the pandemic and introducing more cultural awareness into it. The novelty of its writing determines the relevance of this work. The author points out that children’s awareness of culture and education providers impacts academic achievements, which is valuable for further use in research (Ladson-Billings, 2021). The author does not indicate possible limitations for research work.
Howard, T. C. (2021). Culturally responsive pedagogy. Transforming Multicultural Education Policy and Practice: Expanding Educational Opportunity, 137.
This source explores the value of culturally responsive education to improve the academic representation of African American students. The central thesis of this work is the need to introduce culturally responsive approaches in learning to improve academic performance and engagement (Howard, 2021). In addition, the study’s relevance is that it was written in 2021, less than five years ago. This source can be used to justify the use of the study of history and culture in the learning process. The author considers the raised issue through the structural deficit theory and pedagogical perspectives.
Howard, T. C. (2019). Why race and culture matter in schools: Closing the achievement gap in America’s classrooms. Teachers College Press.
Howard (2019) examines the role of culture in the learning process. He defines the thesis of the study as the importance of cultural learning for African American, Asian, and Hispanic learners to limit the achievement gap or the chronic disparities in educational outcomes. The study is current because it considers an actual problem and was written no more than five years ago. By examining the issue from several perspectives, this work provides value for studying the achievement gap problem between students of different races (Howard, 2019). The author does not single out limitations for this research work.
Hung, M., Smith, W. A., Voss, M. W., Franklin, J. D., Gu, Y., & Bounsanga, J. (2020). Exploring student achievement gaps in school districts across the United States. Education and Urban Society, 52(2), 175–193.
This article by Hung et al. (2020) can be used as a refutation of the thesis of the study. This is because the authors point out that the decisive influence on the achievement gap is not cultural or knowledge of African American history, but household adult education acquisition. Thus, the authors argue that this criterion significantly contributes to individuals’ learning success.
This study is relevant because it concerns the topic of limiting educational inequalities and was written in 2020. The limitation of this study is that it “did not analyze parent education levels at the school district level, though descriptively we see a disparity” (Hung et al., 2020, p. 14). A potential area of use of this article is to bring arguments against the point of view that culture has a leading role in the achievement gap in education.