Developing Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: Language, Cultural Proficiency, and Educational Resilience

Introduction

Although the population of the United States is growing increasingly diverse, higher education, as a whole, does not reflect this diversity. Individuals from historically marginalized groups—including Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous people, people from low-income or working-class families, and individuals whose parents do not have a bachelor’s degree or higher (i.e., first-generation college students) continue to be underrepresented within higher education. The United States has always been an ethno-racially diverse nation. According to the 2020 U.S. census, the multiracial population has increased from 9 million in 2010 to 33.8 million in 2020, a 276% increase (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020). Similarly, bilingual, and bicultural children are one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population. This increase has a direct impact on key factors affecting education, namely, language proficiency, acculturation, and educational resiliency.

Culture and language define and determine how students interact in school environments (i.e., social interactions, behaviors, and value systems); it is important to consider these factors when evaluating students for appropriate educational placement and/or intervention services. This is especially true when students immigrate into another country (or come from a culture different than the school’s culture) that is substantially culturally and linguistically different from their own. It is essential to determine the processes students undergo in terms of assimilating, negotiating, rejecting, or integrating a new culture/language in relation to their own native culture/language. Knowledge of these processes and the ability to successfully navigate school environments is resilience. Depending on which processes students experience; these processes determine students’ social-emotional, academic, and mental health outcomes. And consequently, these outcomes are also reflected in higher education recruitment and retention practices of minority faculty.

Language is a symbolic system that can designate, associate, denote, or connote meaning (Brice & Brice, 2009; Owens, 2022); and is expressed verbally via oral and written narratives as well as non-verbally through gestures, eye contact, and body language. Culture can also be thought of as a ‘symbolic system’ that reflects a historical timeline of memories and experiences (Hyter & Salas-Provance, 2019), Simply put, over time culture shapes people; what they value, how they live, and interact with each other, and how they interpret the world around them. Culture also influences how people develop and use language. The relationship between culture and language is a well-known and established social construct. In fact, language is reflected in one’s culture, but also one’s culture ‘sculpts’ and defines its language. Accordingly, language is highly intertwined with culture, as it is both a by-product and a constructing mechanism of culture. Thus, it is almost impossible to separate the two symbolic systems.This notion of culture and language as inseparable symbolic systems that impact how people use language, interact, and interpret the world around them has implications for educating students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. This chapter emphasizes the importance of culture and language as it pertains to the development of educational resilience and academic recruitment and retention in higher education.