Equity and inclusion should also influence how we work as educators. But there is a risk of viewing this narrowly through the lens of "diversity." Perhaps you have a program that mostly serves white, middle class students, and you are hoping to increase the number of students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Simply offering a program to new audiences or trying to replicate a successful curriculum in a different community might not work as well as you hope. Expanding who you teach – in an inclusive and equitable manner – might actually mean revisiting both what and how you teach.
Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, provides a number of free resources to help educators tackle social justice and anti-bias.
Another important reference point is the concept of culturally relevant teaching as developed by Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ladson-Billings has written extensively about her studies of successful teachers, including Crossing Over to Canaan: The Journey of New Teachers in Diverse Classrooms, The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children, and Beyond the Big House: African American Educators on Teacher Education. In "Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy" (1995) Ladson-Billings outlined some of the common themes she noticed with successful culturally relevant teachers, including:
- The conceptions of self and others held by culturally relevant teachers:
- Believed that all the students were capable of academic success,
- Saw their pedagogy as art-unpredictable, always in the process of becoming,
- Saw themselves as members of the community,
- Saw teaching as a way to give back to the community,
- Believed in a Freirean notion of "teaching as mining" or pulling knowledge out.
- The manner in which social relations are structured by culturally relevant teachers:
- Maintain fluid student-teacher relationships,
- Demonstrate a connectedness with all of the students,
- Develop a community of learners,
- Encourage students to learn collaboratively and be responsible for another.
- The conceptions of knowledge held by culturally relevant teachers:
- Knowledge is not static; it is shared, recycled, and constructed.
- Knowledge must be viewed critically.
- Teachers must be passionate about knowledge and learning.
- Teachers must scaffold, or build bridges, to facilitate learning.
- Assessment must be multifaceted, incorporating multiple forms of excellence.
Ladson-Billings contributed a chapter to the book White Teachers/Diverse Classrooms: A Guide to Building Inclusive Schools, Promoting High Expectations, and Eliminating Racism entitled "Yes, But How Do We Do It? Practicing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy" in which she emphasizes that "doing" is less important than "being."
"I argue that the first problem teachers confront is believing that successful teaching for poor students of color is primarily about 'what to do.' Instead, I suggest that the problem is rooted in how we think – about the social contexts, about the students, about the curriculum, and about instruction. Instead of the specific lessons and activities that we select to fill the day, we must begin to understand the ways our theories and philosophies are made to manifest in the pedagogical practices and rationales we exhibit in the classroom" (Ladson-Billings, 2006).
Please watch the video below in which Ladson-Billings introduces three elements of culturally relevant teaching: student learning, cultural competence, and critical consciousness.