CULTURALLY RELEVANT PEDAGOGY (CRP)

 

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP)—otherwise referred to as ‘Culturally Relevant Practice’, ‘Culturally Relevant Teaching’ or ‘Culturally Responsive Teaching’—builds on the understanding that in order to maximise learning opportunities, educators would benefit from gaining knowledge of the cultures represented in their classrooms and translating that knowledge into instructional practice.

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• accepting students’ distinctive beliefs and values

• acknowledging the beliefs, values, practices, and discourses that may be used by others with particular cultural orientations

• adapting behaviour to new cultural environments

• addressing cultural diversity, power, privilege and racism in society

• addressing mismatches effectively

• adjusting teaching, learning and assessment activities to take into account and utilise students’ diverse sociocultural, academic, linguistic, work and life background experiences

• agreeing to suspend judgment

• apportioning room for individuality

• appreciating the world through students’ eyes

• asking students about their preferred modes of learning and encouraging them to try new approaches

• avoiding Australian colloquialisms

• becoming purposeful about verbal/non-verbal messages

• being nonjudgmental

• blending strengths from students’ own cultural orientations

• building relationships based on mutual respect

• capitalising on student diversity

• challenging students through a rigorous curriculum

• collecting evidence and advice on teaching effectiveness

• communicating respect

• conducting a needs analysis at the beginning of a course and using findings to shape provision

• connecting with literature on teaching and learning across cultures

• creating opportunities for all students to participate and bring their strengths to classroom activities

• critiquing the implicit assumptions of disciplinary perspectives and ways of knowing

• designing cross-cultural tasks which use and link with students’ knowledge

• detecting one’s own ethnocentrism

• developing students’ skills to communicate confidently and effectively with native speakers and with other multi-lingual English speakers who have unfamiliar accents

• discerning one’s own and other people’s assumptions, preconceptions, stereotypes, prejudices, and overt/covert discrimination

• embedding the development of English language skills into the curriculum

• embracing connectedness

• employing themes that help students understand their own histories and see themselves in the teaching and learning

• enabling opportunities for all students to learn and practise intercultural communication skills

• encouraging solidarity

• engaging in active observation and paying attention to subtle nuances

• establishing a safe and welcoming atmosphere

• exhibiting cognitive flexibility

• experimenting with a variety of different approaches to teaching and monitoring their effectiveness with different groups of learners

• finding commonalities

• fostering empathy

• generating an atmosphere conducive to learning and self-discovery

• getting feedback from colleagues on course content and assessment task design on whether it may inadvertently disadvantage students from cultural backgrounds different from your own

• identifying solutions to social issues and/or global challenges that take cultural considerations into account

• implementing firm, consistent, high expectations for behaviour and academic achievement

• incorporating diverse and relatable examples

• increasing awareness of assumptions made about students and how they influence interactions

• investigating the experiences and contributions of students’ cultural groups throughout history in ways that highlight the engagement and agency of people to impact their own lives and futures

• knowing oneself and one's own cultural make up

• learning about and valuing students’ previous experiences and cultural backgrounds

• limiting verbal/non-verbal behaviours that may be viewed as impolite by people who have different cultural affiliations

• maintaining a sharp eye on equivalence, fairness, inclusivity through reflective practice informed by student performance data

• making the new academic culture accessible

• modelling a spirit of mutual equality

• nurturing students to maintain their own cultural identit(ies) and their home language

• opening up, curious about and willing to learn from others who have different cultural orientations

• overcoming inhibitions and communicating without fear

• planning and managing formal group work to enhance understanding and contributing to students feeling confident in social interactions

• practicing reflexive understanding

• preventing stereotypes and prejudice

• promoting critical thinking

• providing culturally-grounded evidence to make points (e.g., the cultural underpinning of evidence, opinion, and arguments)

• reading between the cultural lines

• recognising internal diversity and heterogeneity of cultural groups

• reflecting on oneself and how personal cultural norms affect teaching and interactions with students

• remaining flexible, creative, organised, and enthusiastic

• researching how to match instruction with students’ cultural norms or participating in site-based inquiry groups around matching instruction with students’ cultural norms

• respecting students’ life experiences and cultural norms

• seeing each student as an important member of the classroom community

• seeking out colleagues from diverse backgrounds and discussing approaches to teaching with them

• showing cultural humility

• speaking clearly and at a slightly slower pace

• staying consciousness of the fact that people of other cultural affiliations may follow different verbal/non-verbal communicative conventions that are meaningful from their perspective

• striving to meet students’ diverse cultural and academic learning styles

• striving to understand diverse message systems

• taking opportunities to engage/cooperate with individuals who have different cultural orientations and perspectives

• thinking about the language objectives of a lesson and determining what kind of supports may be needed for NESB students

• tolerating ambiguity

• understanding processes of cultural, societal and individual interaction(s)

• validating other perspectives

• valuing cultural diversity

• waiting after asking a question to give less confident English speakers time to formulate a response

• willing to question what is usually taken-for-granted as ‘normal’

• working from students’ prior knowledge

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