The Culturally Responsive Education Principles

Introduction

The recent decades in the educational sphere can be characterized as an active movement towards greater inclusion of the experiences of students who come from diverse backgrounds. It is believed to significantly improve the learning process and outcomes, especially among those who do not belong to the dominant culture. Indeed, the principles that cultivate and promote mutual respect, understanding of various viewpoints, and students’ active participation in education can benefit all the members of the school community.

For this reason, schools must seek to elaborate on culturally responsive teaching plans. For instance, some educational institutions in Ohio created active learning classrooms where students sit face-to-face and are encouraged to discuss the issues presented by the teacher or fellow classmates. In this regard, the current essay intends to review seven central principles that help to develop a culturally responsive curriculum. They include positive perspectives on parents and families, communication of high expectations, learning within the context of culture, student-centered instruction, culturally mediated instruction, reshaping the curriculum, and teacher as facilitator.

Positive Perspectives on Parents and Families

The first principle of culturally responsive education includes cultivating and endorsing positive perspectives on parents and families. It implies that teachers should view the latter as their partners who can provide crucial insights concerning a student’s unique needs, behavior, and skills. Additionally, it means that various families have different expectations about their child’s performance which an educator should consider. Furthermore, under the positive perspectives on the parents and families principle, the caregivers should be encouraged to be involved in the education process.

The first strategy that can increase parents’ involvement in the education process is an organization of meetings for family members every month where all the parties can discuss the students’ needs and collectively resolve some issues. Except for that, it is necessary to promote interpersonal digital or face-to-face communications between the institution and adults. Secondly, children should be encouraged to effectively inform their parents about school life by creating a newspaper that would depict the most prominent events of the class and school. Lastly, it is crucial to ensure that family members who have difficulties understanding and speaking English receive information in their own language.

Communication of High Expectations

The second principle postulates that educators should communicate high expectations concerning their students’ performance and learning without discriminating against particular individuals or groups. It means that, unlike instructions that should be adaptive to a person’s cultural background, teachers should seek for all of the children to acquire similar skillset and knowledge. Such an approach contrasts with another practice when instructors from varying expectations based on students’ previous performance or ethnic, religious, or sexual prejudices towards particular groups.

To achieve that, it is important to clearly convey the performance standards and rules of behavior that children should meet at the beginning of every semester as well as during classes. Moreover, teachers should cultivate a culture of respect for each individual and belief in his or her abilities. Furthermore, educators should provide feedback to identify the issues that students should address to meet high expectations.

Learning Within the Context of Culture

Education process that acknowledges the context of culture can be beneficial for those students who belong to minority groups. It is explained by the fact that some children can experience alienation and difficulties in learning in a certain way because of their background. In this regard, educators should, first of all, intend to differentiate their teaching approaches to fit the needs of all the students. For instance, people from Asian or Latin countries may be more comfortable learning in groups; thus, teachers can integrate team activities into the study plan. The next strategy includes raising cultural awareness among children and showing how individuals from a different backgrounds would interpret a specific behavior. In addition, any conflict that arises due to discriminative attitudes should be resolved by a teacher with the help of parents.

Student-Centered Instruction

Student-centered education is based on the premise that students are teachers’ partners that actively participate in the learning process rather than being passive instruction followers. This principle further ensures that schools properly address the needs of each individual child. It can be achieved primarily by allowing the students to have more control over the curriculum and choose which topics they would like to cover. In a similar vein, instructors can encourage children to unite in the interest groups devoted to reading, sports, and playing musical instruments, to name a few. Last but not least, educators should promote student reflection that would reveal the unique views of each individual, which can later be shared with the class.

Culturally Mediated Instruction

The principle of culturally mediated education implies that instructors use a set of methods that acknowledge the ethnic and religious diversity of students. In other words, under this paradigm, teachers seek to show their students that there can be more than one interpretation of social and historical events which are equally ‘correct’ and vary from culture to culture. Moreover, educators intend to interact with the students by following the norms of the child’s culture.

The first strategy that promotes culturally mediated instruction encompasses a thorough analysis of the learning styles that are the most suitable for a student. The research can include a survey of the existing academic and non-academic literature, parents, and other representatives of a certain culture. Secondly, instructors should be encouraged to use a student’s native language when providing instructions. Thirdly, teachers can organize the learning process in a manner that allows children to use their cultural capital.

Reshaping the Curriculum

After reviewing the previous principles, it becomes clear that educational institutions should try to develop a new curriculum that would enable achieving culturally mediated and student-centered learning. In this respect, one of the effective changes would be the inclusion of tasks that necessitate students to do research within their communities. Similarly, textbooks that children use should be written by people of various social, religious, and ethnic backgrounds. Furthermore, a teacher should present alternative perspectives and attitudes towards the same issue.

Teacher as Facilitator

Finally, educators serve as a guide that seeks the best way to integrate all the principles discussed above into the curriculum. As such, the instructor should facilitate the experience of knowledge acquisition for all the students regardless of their cultural capital. To achieve that, the former should constantly learn the traditions and social norms that prevail in particular communities through books, articles, the internet, and interpersonal interactions. Knowing several words or phrases of the child’s native language would facilitate the interaction and promote intercultural respect as well. Nevertheless, an educator should understand personal limitations concerning the development of important skills in a certain culture and, for this reason, attract a student’s local community to help address this gap.

Conclusion

As for my personal and professional development, to successfully realize all the principles listed above, I should possess high levels of cultural competence. Although ‘Cultural competency checklist’ revealed my high level of proficiency in this sphere, some areas also necessitate further improvement. One of such spheres is the ability to work with various academic and non-academic to retrieve important cultural disparity-related information. I also should learn to use more visual materials that would display information about other cultures during my practice. Thus, I will seek to become more prominent in these two areas to be a better professional in the future.