Culturally Responsive Teaching in This International World

Classrooms in various parts of the globe are immensely diverse. Patterns of international migration have significantly updated the cultural make-up of many industrialized societies and, by extension, their school-aged populations.

 

These changes are particularly seen in traditional destination countries like Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In this rising globalized landscape, schools face impactful challenges. Researchers have documented lower educational outcomes like student achievement and graduation rates for immigrant students in the majority of countries across the globe.

 

In response to these results, further research is being devoted to understanding and supporting conditions for equitable learning. Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) is one of the many productive and practical ideas for supporting these conditions. CRT is concerned with the methods of teaching and practices which recognize the significance of including the cultural backgrounds of students in all aspects of learning.

 

To date, a major focus in the field of CRT pays attention to the requirement for a greater diversity of role models and learning experiences in the classroom, and an expansion of teachers’ capacities for supporting and affirming diverse students.

 

As the researchers of education who have done work with teachers in training, and teachers in K-12 schools as well as teacher educators in countries like Africa, Asia, Australasia, Canada, Europe, U.K. and the U.S., we argue that more attention requires to be paid to an overlooked aspect of CRT: both education systems and individual teachers must develop culturally responsive assessment and evaluation practices to increase and improve the success of students.

 

How to employ and prepare teachers?

 

 

CRT is also called culturally relevant teaching. In this mode of teaching, the main aim is to be aware of how culture, ethnicity, race, socioeconomic status, gender identity, language,  and religious background may impact the learning experiences of students.

 

In various school contexts, student diversity far increases the diversity of teachers. This type of imbalance means students do not encounter educator role models who reflect diverse cultural backgrounds throughout their schooling. Thus, one such aspect of increasing CRT is raising efforts for attracting a more representative demographic of teachers. According to a recent analysis from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in most OECD countries the typical person who expects a teaching career at age 15 is a female with no immigrant background.

 

These findings are on the bases of a question to 15-year-olds on 2006 and 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment surveys which asks that what kind of job do you expect to have when you are about 30 years old.

 

The people who are racialized represent 26% of the provincial population, yet comprise only 9 % of the 117,905 elementary school and kindergarten teachers and 10 % of 70,520 secondary school teachers.

 

 

By: Preeti Narula

Content: http://theconversation.com/culturally-responsive-teaching-in-a-globalized-world-109881