Heather A. Linville, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA

I have had the opportunity to present on the topic of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP; also known as culturally responsive pedagogy) at two affiliate conferences (WITESOL in 2016 and MIDTESOL in 2017) and the TESOL Convention in 2018, yet I still find myself struggling with CRP and what it means for English learners (ELs). In discussions with colleagues at those conferences, and from a study I conducted, it seems that many of us struggle with how we can support and value other cultures and languages while teaching English. Here I explore this tension in teaching with CRP and the now-updated culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP).

CRP was developed in response to the ongoing achievement gap in the United States between minoritized and non-minoritized youth. Well-documented and resistant to change (see The National Center for Education Statistics for the latest statistics), Ladson-Billings (1995) attributed the achievement gap in part to the disconnect between the culture of students of color and their teachers and schools. She developed CRP as a “pedagogy of opposition…specifically committed to collective, not merely individual, empowerment” (1995, p. 160), and as a way to ensure all students

1. achieve academic success,
2. develop (or maintain) cultural competence, and
3. analyze and critique societal inequities. (pp. 160–162)

A common pedagogy in education classes preparing teachers to work with culturally and linguistically diverse learners, I introduce CRP in my teacher education classes with preservice teachers who are seeking dual certification in ESL and another area (such as elementary education or secondary math). Though many of them will not go on to work as ESL teachers, they will have ELs in their general education classrooms where CRP can be an especially useful framework. I follow Gay’s (2002) recommendations to develop in preservice teachers

1. knowledge about cultural diversity in general, and students’ specific cultural diversity;
2. ability to develop curricula that include ethnically and culturally diverse content;
3. ability to create classroom environments that reflect culturally responsive caring;
4. ability to develop students’ intercultural communication knowledge and skills; and
5. ability to plan instruction to meet varying cultural learning preferences among students.

In 2016, in order to determine how preservice teachers understand and enact CRP once they leave my classes, I conducted a study with two preservice teachers in their field experiences in two different elementary school classrooms and with two different cooperating teachers. I collected journal entries throughout the semester and conducted final interviews with the two preservice teachers and one of the cooperating teachers. I found that their understanding and enacting of CRP was incomplete.

The preservice teachers understood CRP as knowing students and their backgrounds, validating their students’ cultures, and connecting school to their home lives, but as separate from academic learning. One said, “I really did not have any more discussion about [the ELs’] culture due to me starting to work with them on educational activities.” She later reinforced this idea of the separation of culture and academics, saying,

I can see how knowing more about their culture, or education culture they grew up, with would be important to address right away when they come to school here, however since it was the middle of the year they are most likely used to most aspects of school...

The other preservice teacher saw the value of CRP in improving academic achievement, stating CRP is “understanding what their home life is like…you just need to take those things into account and you need to know if they’re getting support at home and if that’s just not a thing that they culturally do at home…” She went on to say, “Making those connections with school and home so you’re drawing upon their experiences to kind of bring them together…you can have higher achievement if they are both connected.” However, a deficit perspective on the home life of ELs is also apparent, especially when she stated later, “But you can’t change the parents. You can’t change everything.”

Both the preservice teachers in this study viewed CRP as a means to an end for ELs to achieve academic success rather than as an ongoing way of teaching and learning that would help them develop cultural competence and critique society’s inequities. In addition, they expressed views of linguistic and cultural diversity as problems to overcome rather than as resources for learning. The preservice teachers met some of the CRP elements set out by Gay (2002) by working to create classroom environments that are culturally sensitive, including culturally diverse content or modifying content, and seeking knowledge about their students’ cultural diversity. However, they did not try to develop students’ intercultural communication abilities beyond learning U.S. academic norms, nor did they vary their instruction for different cultural learning preferences. The one cooperating teacher I was able to interview summed up this perspective of EL learning, saying “They still have to learn our ways.”

I have heard similar expressions from colleagues in my conversations during and after my conference presentations. We, as English language teachers, want to support our students’ other cultures and value their cultural and linguistic diversity, yet we often only do this insofar as it supports students acculturating to English and U.S. academic norms. There are many potential reasons for this partial enacting of CRP: time constraints, curricular limitations, pressure from administrators, and a belief that we are best serving ELs by focusing most on their adaption to U.S. academic norms. Rosa and Flores (2017) in their work with Latinx students challenge this belief, noting that “asset-based pedagogies [such as CRP] are based on the presumption that students of color will become academically successful when they learn to produce the appropriate academic codes” (p. 175). However, they point out that what is considered appropriate often depends as much on what is said as who is saying it due to “‘raciolinguistic ideologies,’ which conflate certain racialized bodies with linguistic deficiency unrelated to any objective linguistic practices” (Rosa & Flores, 2017, p. 176). This tension is what continues to push me to find better ways to educate culturally and linguistically diverse students in a society where that diversity is rarely valued.

As I continued to search for answers, I discovered that some researchers have also rethought and criticized CRP, including Ladson-Billings (2014), who states:

What state departments, school districts, and individual teachers are now calling “culturally relevant pedagogy” is often a distortion and corruption of the central ideas I attempted to promulgate. The idea that adding some books about people of color, having a classroom Kwanzaa celebration, or posting “diverse” images makes one “culturally relevant” seem to be what the pedagogy has been reduced to. (p. 82)

With this recognition of the limitations of CRP, Ladson-Billings (2014) and others now call for CSP—culturally sustaining pedagogy—a pedagogy which critically questions the goals of CRP and aims to “ensure the valuing and maintenance[emphasis added] of our increasingly multiethnic and multilingual society” (Paris, 2012, p. 94). In other words, rather than only referring to the home culture as a stepping stone to acculturate into U.S. academic culture, we should see those cultures and languages as also having a place in our classrooms, in our teaching and objectives for all students. With CSP, it is hoped that we can find a way to “meaningfully value and maintain the practices of [our] students in the process of extending [our] students’ repertoires of practice to include dominant language, literacies, and other cultural practices” (Paris, 2012, p. 95).

I have started introducing CSP with my current preservice teachers and they raise important questions. What does CSP look like in the classroom? How can I work to maintain a culture that is not my own? How do I reconcile what my job is (teaching English) with a desire to maintain linguistic diversity? They also struggle to dismantle the belief that ELs achieve success by mastering “standard” English and U.S. academic practices, although evidence abounds when they see few culturally and linguistically diverse students from their communities in their college classes. These questions and tensions remain for me as well, especially as I look for ways to not only teach about but also model CSP within my teacher education classes. Further research and study is needed, but in the meantime, I hope to continue the conversation about how CRP and now CSP can serve us in teaching English as well as ways we can best present it to our preservice teachers. My hope is that we as a profession will be able to critically examine the partitioning of some cultures and languages as best suited for home, while only one culture (U.S. mainstream) and language (English) are appropriate for school. I also hope we can continue to challenge this privileging to be able to truly value U.S. society’s vast cultural and linguistic diversity. By fully embracing all our students’ cultures in the classroom as vehicles for learning, I believe that we do better by our ELs and all students as they develop greater understanding of different cultures and worldviews. Finally, I hope we can achieve Ladson-Billings’ (1995) goal of empowering all linguistically and culturally diverse students.

References

Gay, G. (2002). Preparing for culturally responsive teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(2), 106–116.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But that’s just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory into Practice, 34(3), 159–165.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0: A.k.a. the remix. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 74–84.

Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93–97.

Rosa, J., & Flores, N. (2017). Do you hear what I hear? Raciolinguistic ideologies and culturally sustaining pedagogies. In D. Paris & H. S. Alim (Eds.), Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world (pp. XX–XX). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.