Making the Connection: Extending Culturally Responsive Teaching through Home(land) Pedagogies

by Nadjwa E.L. Norton and Courtney C. Bentley


In an effort to promote teacher efficacy and the removal of oppressive pedagogical school structures that disproportionately affect students of color, educational researchers have called for teachers to employ culturally responsive pedagogies (Gay; Ladson-Billings; Nieto). Gay defines culturally responsive teaching as "using cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them" (29). Despite the assertion that these pedagogies are multidimensional in nature, they are rooted in the conceptualization of culture as solely race and ethnicity. This conceptualization ignores the complex intersectional nature of culture and promotes monolithic constructs. To realize the full potential of culturally responsive pedagogies, culture must be redefined to include total ways of being around race, class, age, ethnicity, citizenship, ability, and spirituality (De Gaetano, Williams, and Volk 1998).