Culturally responsive teaching in secondary ELA classrooms

Abstract

Culturally-responsive teaching is the recognition of cultural influences on students’ learning, as well as the practice of incorporating texts, topics, and learning tasks that bridge the gaps between students’ cultures (and those of their peers) and the motivation they can find by seeing themselves reflected in course content. The three main components of this project will be: scholarly research, surveys of in-service teachers, and a culminating “best practices” guide for practicing teachers. The objective of this project is to investigate how, in a field dominated by white, middle-class people, secondary English teachers can responsibly navigate culturallyresponsive teaching at all levels of instruction. Our faculty and alumni mention the term “culturally-responsive teaching” in passing or as something we are expected to just know how to do, but I’ve found that many preservice teachers (myself included) do not have the background knowledge to responsibly do this in our own classrooms. This study aims to discover what secondary English teachers in Indiana know about culturally-responsive teaching and how we can go about developing a stronger presence in our classrooms.