What is Culturally Responsive Teaching?

BEAC provides school districts, administrators, teachers, and staff with professional development training on culturally responsive instruction because it is a proven, non-biased tool to help improve student outcomes, especially students from historically underserved communities. BEAC is developing an online learning library that is a collection of our best training modules for educators. Since 2018, the BEAC team has worked with districts across the country to improve the educational outcomes of Black students. In this current era where the federal government is attempting to ban efforts to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion, we want to provide members and the broader community with data-driven tools and resources to continue the important work of improving educational outcomes for students from historically underserved and marginalized communities.

What is culturally responsive instruction?

Source: EducationWeek.com

“Culturally responsive teaching means using students’ customs, characteristics, experience, and perspectives as tools for better classroom instruction.” (Source: EducationWeek.com) Culturally responsive instruction was first identified by the research and work of Gloria Ladson-Billings.

“In her research, she saw black children viewed as deficient and deviant. They weren’t seen as children with problems. They were the problem. None of this made sense to her and it wasn’t helping improve learning outcomes. So she decided to flip the question. Instead of asking what is wrong with black children, she began to ask what is right. That meant asking questions about their teachers and their classrooms. It meant taking a hard look at how children were taught. What could be done to help teachers succeed and help their students? (Source: University of Wisconsin–Madison)

At its core, culturally responsive teaching leads with the idea that all students can learn and holds all students to a high academic standard. This may seem intuitive and straightforward, but it is not. Past studies found that white teachers (who make up 80% of all teachers) are more likely to have lower expectations for black students than white students. (Source: EducationWeek.com). BEAC will continue to provide educators with the best professional development tools to help students, teachers, and schools succeed.