Culturally Responsive Curriculum, Assessment, and

Instruction

Session 9 Spring 2012

Essential Questions

• What is the value of embedding multicultural content and strategies into curriculum?

• Is multicultural teaching simply “good” teaching?• How can curriculum help students understand

that the unique experiences of people or groups cause them to view the same content or events differently?

• How do you use multiple culturally sensitive strategies to teach and assess complex content as well as cognitive and social skills?

Objectives

The participant will:

• Identify characteristics of culturally relevant instruction.

• Identify and write multicultural objectives for specific content/subject to meet the needs of diverse learners.

• Identify various teaching styles that meet the needs of diverse students.

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Culturally Relevant Instruction,Culturally Responsive Teaching

•Read the article The Culturally Responsive Teacher (Handout #9-1).

•Record your responses in the Discussion tab under Task 1.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching

Dr. Geneva GayUniversity of Washington

Culturally Responsive Teacher Research

• Many teacher education preparation programs do not have cultural awareness as part of their programs.

• Some schools have added it but have only focused on race and ethnicity.

• Research has shown that teachers who participate in the inclusion of multicultural education are less likely to embrace cultural deficit views.

NCCREST (2004)

Becoming A Culturally Responsive Teacher Has Three Facets

•Learn about your own cultural background.

•Learn about your students.•Share your own culture, customs

and beliefs with the students.

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Becoming Culturally Responsive

Knowledge alone is not enough to ensure that teachers are considering multicultural education in the classroom (Gay, 2000). Acquiring a knowledge base should be done in addition to thorough self-reflection. Teachers must examine their own beliefs about relationships among culture, race and ethnicity, gender, and intellectual ability; the expectations they hold for students from diverse groups; and how their beliefs and expectations are evident in instructional behaviors.

If teachers themselves are not aware of their own cultural lenses, they can inadvertently hinder educational opportunities for diverse students or impede their abilities to work for change of negative beliefs. For these reasons, self-awareness is critical for the effectiveness of culturally responsive caring.

Culturally Responsive Teaching is Characterized by:

• Positive perceptions of parents and families• Communication of high expectations• Learning within the context of culture• Student-centered instruction• Culturally mediated instruction• Reshaping the curriculum• Teacher as facilitator

(Ladson-Billings 1994)

Culturally Responsive Teachers…

• Involve all students in the construction of knowledge.

• Build on student’s personal and cultural strengths.• Help students examine the curriculum from multiple

perspectives.• Use varied assessment practices that promote

learning.• Make the culture of the classroom inclusive of all

students.

1. Provide opportunities for students to work together.

2. Use real life student experiences.

3. Combine subject areas around a relevant topic or theme.

4. Involve students actively and directly with oral and printed language.

5. Address students reading and learning styles.

6. Actively model behaviors that you want students to learn and practice.

7. Provide all students with meaningful opportunities for critical thinking and problem solving.

8. Provide a balanced curriculum which explores multicultural perspectives and examples, valuing a unified society.

9. Use alternative assessments.

Culturally responsive instructional strategies -

Culturally Responsive Curriculum

“Culturally relevant teaching takes place when the curriculum is connected to the student’s cultural background and teacher’s instruction takes advantage of this connection. This connection allows students to develop their true learning capabilities.”

Grant, C. (2009) Teach, Change, Empower

1. Educational Equity: ensuring an opportunity for every student to learn and closing the achievement gap.

2. Cultural Pluralism: helping students develop respect, gain appreciation and acceptance for individuals and groups who are culturally and physically different from themselves.

3. Empowerment: teaching students to develop a positive attitude, self-direction, self-control, and independence as well as interdependence in social groups.

4. Intergroup and Intra-group Harmony: providing knowledge and skills in a classroom environment that prepares students to live and work with members of their own social group as well as those who are different.

5. Multicultural Knowledge and Perspective: providing opportunity for students to learn about their own cultural roots and perspectives and to appreciate those of others.

Components of Multicultural Education

Gloria Ladson-Billings and Culturally Relevant Teaching

1. An ability to develop students academically. This means effectively helping students read, write, speak, compute, pose, and solve higher order problems, and engage in peer review of problem solutions.

2. A willingness to nurture and support cultural competence in both home and school cultures. The key is for teachers to value and build on skills that students bring from the home culture.

3. The development of a sociopolitical or critical consciousness. Teachers help students recognize, understand, and critique current social inequities.

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Vignette

Read the vignette:“Exposing Inequities through Education”

– How does this vignette demonstrate the first criterion of culturally relevant teaching – developing students academically?

– How does it address the third criterion - developing a sociopolitical or critical consciousness?

Level 4

The Social Action Approach - Students make decisions on important social issues and take actions to help solve them.

Level 3

The Transformation Approach - The structure of the curriculum is changed to enable students to view concepts, issues, events, and themes from the perspectives of diverse ethnic and cultural groups.

Level 2

The Additive Approach - Content, concepts, themes, and perspectives are added to the curriculum without changing its structure.

Level 1

The Contribution Approach - Focus on heroes, holidays, and discrete cultural elements.

Culturally Responsive Curriculum

Some things to think about…How are diverse groups represented in the

curriculum?

– Add-ons?– In the side-bar?– Interspersed sporadically into the curriculum?– During months that recognize diverse groups?– Solely as contributions but not in the main

history?

Teaching about Lewis and Clark

Think about how inclusive or exclusive this lesson is for diverse learners. Who is excluded? Which students may feel comfortable or uncomfortable with the lesson or activity? How can this lesson be more inclusive? What components of multicultural education are included? (slide 12) What culturally responsive instructional strategies are used? (slide 10) What level of infusion of multicultural content is shown? (slide 15)

Appropriate Inclusion

“Teachers wishing to include American Indians in the curriculum sometimes chose Sacagawea as a heroine to discuss; but from many American Indian perspectives, Sequoyah would be a preferable historical figure. Sacagawea served dominant group interests by leading Lewis and Clark west, whereas Sequoyah served the interests of the Cherokee by developing an alphabet for encoding the Cherokee language.”

Sleeter and Grant (2007)

Identifying Bias in Curriculum and Instructional Materials

Seven Forms of Bias in Instructional Materials

1. Invisibility: What You Don’t See Makes a Lasting Impression

2. Stereotyping: Shortcuts to Bigotry

3. Imbalance and Selectivity: A Tale Half Told

4. Unreality: Rose Colored Glasses

5. Fragmentation and Isolation: The Parts Are Less than the Whole

6. Linguistic Bias: Words Count

7. Cosmetic Bias: "Shiny" Covers20

Why Anti-Bias in Curriculum and Instruction?

• Proponents of an anti-bias curriculum believe it can be a powerful tool in promoting an understanding of social problems arising from discrimination.

• Education is the most powerful and the most effective agent of socialization within any civilized country.

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Why Anti-Bias in Curriculum and Instruction?(Continued)

• The values and cultural norms of certain ethnic backgrounds are significantly different from traditional American values, and this has not always been well understood in many of our schools.

• Schools play a highly significant role in promoting the belief that diversity is a positive and essential characteristic of our nation and its heritage.

• Curriculum content is an obvious starting point.

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Guidelines for Identifying Bias in Curriculum and Materials

READ * REFLECT * SHARE

• Read the Stereotypes Examples and Alternatives.

• Read Language Examples and Alternatives.

• Read Omission, Exclusion, and Perspective Examples and Alternatives.

• Think of one Example with a complimentary Alternative that falls into one of the three categories.

• Share with the class. Be sure to identify the category.23

Seven Forms of BiasSeven Forms of BiasTask #5Task #5

• Use Bias in Curriculum and Instructional Materials and Seven Forms of Bias in Instructional Materials to:

Analyze two school districts’ criteria for the selection of instructional materials.

Be ready to share your findings.

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Essential Questions

• What is the value of embedding multicultural content and strategies into curriculum?

• Is multicultural teaching simply “good” teaching?• How can curriculum help students understand

that the unique experiences of people or groups cause them to view the same content or events differently?

• How do you use multiple culturally sensitive strategies to teach and assess complex content as well as cognitive and social skills?