Culturally Responsive Teaching: A Suggestive Pedagogical Framework

Introduction

The Culture's importance in education cannot be overstated. It has an effect on not only how people communicate and perceive information, but also how groups and individuals think. Culture, as a learning catalyst, makes curricular goals more accessible and opens up new opportunities for achievement. The increasing cultural and ethnic heterogeneity in today's classrooms should inspire and push us all to develop new and culturally relevant teaching strategies for varied students.

The diversity of our learning classrooms has significantly expanded as a result of the entrance of heterogeneous communities and modernization. These diverse peoples have kept their own distinct cultures, language and traditions, which can cause anxiety, discrimination, and racial conflicts, among other things. This change in the racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity of the student is not the problem. The problem is with how educators have handled the transformation. Students from these various racial, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds may have their self-esteem and academic progress affected by a positive or negative response. As the number of children who are culturally diverse rises, it's more crucial than ever for all educators, even new instructors, to pay close attention to how they might modify their practices to match the requirements of all students.

According to research also, there is no single teaching method that can consistently engage all sorts of students, lead to student mastery, and boost academic success. As a result, learning how to link classroom content to students' cultural backgrounds is the most successful strategy teachers can take in multicultural settings. According to researchers (Gay, 2000, 2002), if educators’ efforts ensure that classroom instruction is sensitive to the students' home cultures, their academic success is bound to improve in school and in their future prospects. Culturally Responsive Teaching is one of the most effective techniques for assisting students in closing the achievement gap.

Culturally Responsive Teaching is one of the pedagogies that emphasizes the importance of incorporating students’ cultural backgrounds into all aspects of learning (Ladson-Billings,1994). It's a well-rounded, deliberate strategy that's integrated into every element of student learning. It's also a research-based teaching style that links what students learn in school to their beliefs, behaviors, and life experiences. As an outcome of these relationships, students can have access to a demanding and flexible curriculum and gain higher-order academic abilities.

Culturally Responsive Teaching emphasizes on employing culturally diverse students' varied features, experiences and viewpoints as basis for more collaborative and inclusive teaching. It is based on the notion that academic excellence is more personally meaningful, has higher students’ interest, and is learned more easily and comprehensively when they are situated within students' practical experiences and frames of orientation. (Gay, 2000).

When culturally diverse students are taught in the light of their own cultural and learned experiences’ filters, their academic performance improves (Kleinfeld, 1975; Au & Kawakami, 1994; Foster, 1995, Ladson-Billings, 1994, 1995; 2000; Hollins, 1996;). The term “culturally responsive teaching” refers to education that emphasizes equity and inclusiveness. It is founded on the belief that all students learn differently as a result of a number of factors such as social-emotional needs, language, culture, and family history. Using culture as a learning foundation benefits all students' intellectual development.

Creating impartial and inclusive classroom environments that are similarly helpful to gain knowledge for all students is an important component of culturally responsive teaching. In order to implement culturally responsive teaching, instructional practices are just as important as multicultural curriculum designs catering inclusion. Teachers must understand how to use cultural scaffolding in the classroom to allow students to broaden their mental faculties and achieve academic excellence by drawing on their own ethnicity and wisdom. The notion that students' cultural backgrounds and prior knowledge may aid bridge new learning is at the heart of culturally responsive education.