Culturally Responsive Teaching and Differentiation

Culturally Responsive Teaching and Differentiation                     By: Corey Taylor

“Culturally Responsive Teaching is a pedagogy that recognizes the importance of including students' cultural references in all aspects of learning” (Ladson-Billings,1994).

Culturally responsive teaching and differentiation work together to enable each student to relate course content to his or her cultural context. This approach to teaching students from diverse backgrounds supports the characteristics of students and builds upon who students are and the qualities they bring with them to school. It builds on cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant and effective for them (Cooper 210). Differentiated instruction and assessment is a framework for effective teaching that involves providing different students with different paths to learning. Differentiation helps students process, construct, and making sense of ideas; Regardless of differences in ability, it involves developing teaching materials and assessments that all students in the classroom can effectively learn from.

Resource

Characteristics of culturally responsive teaching:

1.Positive perspectives on parents and families
2.Communication of high expectations
3.Learning within the context of culture
4.Student-centered instruction
5.Culturally mediated instruction
6.Reshaping the curriculum
7.Teacher as facilitator

References

Brown University. (n.d.). Retrieved February 19, 2018, from             https://www.brown.edu/academics/education-alliance/teaching-diverse-      learners/strategies-0/culturally-responsive-teaching-0

Cooper, J. M. (2011). Classroom teaching skills (10th ed.). Belmonte, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage                   Learning.

(n.d.). Retrieved February 19, 2018, from      https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=differentiation%2Bin%2Bteaching&FORM=HD       RSC2