Building Bridges: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and the Achievement Gap

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Building Bridges Culturally Responsive Pedagogy
and the Achievement Gap

• Roger S. Baskin, Sr.
• Educational Specialist
• Office of Student Achievement
• Fairfax County Public Schools

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Brief Overview

• The purpose of this presentation is to
  accomplish the following
• Briefly discuss approaches to understanding the
  achievement gap
• Provide a definition of Culturally Responsive
  Pedagogy (CRP)
• Provide examples of CRP
• Demonstrate connections between the use of CRP
  and closing achievement gaps
• Provide sources of more information

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One Scenario

• A teacher asks the question
• Class, based on the information we have
  learned this week, was Dr. Martin Luther King a
  good man or a bad man?

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The Dilemma

• The teacher expects the class to say in unison
  He was a good man!
• However, one student shouts He was a bad
  man!
• Some students begin to snicker.

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The Teachers Filter

• This child has been giving me trouble all year.
• This is just another example of a child who
  clearly is headed nowhere fastjust another class
  clown.
• Besides, the child has messy handwriting, is
  fidgety, and does not look like the type that
  will be successful.
• I will ignore the child and move on. This child
  is just being bad.

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The Students Filter

• Dr. King was one cool dude. He was B.A.D.
• Bold
• Awesome
• Determined
• A lot of people didnt like him because of his
  stance on the Vietnam War, but he was alright
  with me. He helped a lot of people.

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Group Discussion

• Talk with a partner.
• Identify concerns that arise in this scenario
  that may inform issues relating to student
  achievement.
• What advice could you give the teacher?
• What advice could you give the student?

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Approaches to Understanding the Achievement Gap

• Individual Concerns
• Biological
• Psychological
• Cultural

• Systemic Concerns
• Historical
• Economic
• Institutional
• Policy

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Complexity of the Problem

• There are a variety of contributing factors to
  the achievement gap
• Home environment
• Classroom environment
• Administrative approach
• Youth culture

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Home Environment

• Education level of parents
• Intellectual climate
• Engagement in student learning
• Homework help
• Amount of television viewing
• Amount of sleep
• Social and cultural capital
• Leisure reading

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Proposed Legislation to Impact Homes of At-Risk
Children

• HR 2343 Education Begins at Home Act
• This would authorize 400 million in grants to
  states for programs that offer home visits to
  at-risk families over three years.
• It would also provide two competitive grant
  programs of 50 million each for expanding home
  visits to military families who are English
  language learners.

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Classroom Environment
High Help High Expectation High Help Low Expectation
Low Help High Expectation Low Help Low Expectation
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The Tripod Project
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Ways to Differentiate

1. Differentiating the Content/Topic
2. Differentiating the Process/Activities
3. Differentiating the Product
4. Differentiating by Manipulating the Environment
   or Through Accommodating Individual Learning
   Styles

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Individual Activity

• Consider each type of classroom in the previous
  slide.
• Write down adjectives describing each type of
  classroom experience as if you were a student.
• Consider ways to help teachers develop high
  help/high expectation cultures.

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Administrative Approaches
Planful Alignment High Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) High relational trust among adults High student achievement Spontaneous Alignment Short-term success Little planning around shared decision making Lack of reflective practice
Spontaneous Misalignment Lack of organized focus on shared decision making Short-term success difficult Anarchic Misalignment Organized in sub-units or departments Competitive toward other departments
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Youth Culture

• Noncompliant believers most likely believe in
  education, but chafe under the culture of schools
  (restricted clothing, speech, etc.) and are
  often, as a result, average to failing students.
• Cultural mainstreamers focus on success in the
  greater society, not clinging to their cultural
  identity. Their success is measured by the
  approval of teachers, parents, and employers.
• Cultural straddlers can operate in both the white
  culture and their own, fluently switching from
  the slang and dress of their culturally similar
  friends to standard English and codes of the
  dominant culture.
• Multicultural navigators are teachers, students,
  and community members who are able, if not fully
  to bridge the divide, at least to serve as
  ambassadors between groups.

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A Definition of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

• Educators who work as multicultural navigators
  implement culturally responsive pedagogy.
• Characteristics
• Seek to learn the various cultural experiences of
  students and families.
• Actively implement the understanding of these
  cultures in school instruction, assessment, and
  policy.

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Culturally Responsive Educators
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Individual Exercise

• List people in your school community (students,
  parents, teachers, administrators, custodians,
  etc.) who exhibit the characteristics of cultural
  navigators.
• What characteristics do they exhibit?
• Do they currently serve in leadership roles in
  the school community?

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Examples of CRP

• Personal
• Identify opportunities to learn about various
  cultures represented in your classroom.
• Visit students families and communities.
• Participate in reform efforts in your school.
• Take courses and professional development that
  expand your understanding of diversity.

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Examples of CRP

• Classroom
• Creating a safe environment for students to share
  their culture and varying perspectives
• Formative assessment as a mainstay
• Multiple Intelligences inventories that inform
  instruction and assessment
• Multicultural literature fully integrated into
  the curriculum

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Examples of CRP

• Administration
• Examining policies that may work to the
  disadvantage of some groups in the school
• Creating professional development opportunities
  and reading circles that focus on CRP
• Utilizing PLCs to study and implement effective
  approaches to instruction and assessment

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Group Activity

• Brainstorm activities that can be utilized to
  bridge the gap between the cultures of school,
  home, and peers.
• 3 Classroom activities
• 2 Policy or administrative efforts
• 1 District effort

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Current Research

• A mathematics study conducted among three school
  districts in Alaska found that 6th grade students
  from the Yupik ethnic group outperformed their
  peers when taught perimeter and area through the
  use of traditional methods of building fish racks
  as opposed to using only classroom textbooks.

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Current Research

• In a study conducted by A. W. Boykin, C.
  Ellison, K. Tyler, and M. Dillihunt, 5th and 6th
  grade students (both white and black) preferred
  cooperative learning opportunities in comparison
  to competitive and individual learning.
• Black students, however, showed a higher rate of
  preference for cooperative learning.

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Sources of Information

• Boykin, A.W., et al., (2005). Examining classroom
  learning preferences among elementary school
  students. Social Behavior and Personality An
  International Journal, 33(7), pp. 699-708.
• Bryk, A. and Schneider, B., (2002). Trust in
  schools A core resource for improvement. New
  York Russell Sage Foundation.
• Carter, P., (2007). Keepin it real School
  success beyond black and white. New York
  Oxford University Press.
• Committee on Education Labor U.S. House of
  Representatives
• Ferguson, R., (2007). Toward excellence with
  equity An emerging vision for closing the
  achievement gap. Cambridge, MA Harvard
  Education Press.

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Sources of Information

• Gay, G., (2000). Culturally responsive teaching
  Theory, research, and practice. New York
  Teachers College Press.
• Howard, G., (2006). We cant teach what we dont
  know White teachers, multiracial schools. New
  York Teachers College Press.
• Ladson-Billings, G., (2006). From the achievement
  gap to the education debt Understanding
  achievement in u. s. schools. Presidential
  address at the American Educational Research
  Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA.
• Leithwood, K., et al., (2008). The relationship
  between distributed leadership and teachers
  academic optimism. Journal of Educational
  Administration, 46(2), pp. 214-228.
• Sternberg, R. J., (2007). Culture, Instruction,
  and Assessment. Comparative Education, 43(1),
  pp. 5-22.