Culturally Responsive Education

Since the early 1970’s, there have been robust conversations about how to improve the K-12 educational experience for students of color, African American students in particular. Most of the studies that were conducted showed that African American students (and students of color) lagged behind their white counterparts in both mathematics and reading. The Coleman Report in 1966 gave rise to future discussions regarding gaps in achievement between African American and White students. Such conversations about disparities in academic achievement between African American and White students were generally from cultural deficit perspectives, meaning, students of color, were blamed for the gap in achievement between …show more content…
Asante (1999) explained that Afrocentric education puts

the [African American] child in a “centered place”. The centered place (i.e., Africa),

anchors and roots the [African American] child so that he or she is not ideologically

“floating around” thinking he or she is someone that he or she is not. Proper cultural grounding provides African children with a context, which is essential because

Eurocentric/Western culture has been detrimental to African American children because

they are expected to behave in ways that are not of themselves, but are Eurocentric, in

fact. According to Asante (1988), because African Americans do not know about their

culture in Africa, “… their images, symbols, lifestyles, and manners [become]

contradictory and thereby destructive to personal and collective growth and

development” (p. 1). Asante further states that, “such ignorance leads to annihilation”.

African American children need to be part of an educational system that

recognizes their abilities and culture, draws upon their strengths, and incorporates them

into the [teaching and] learning process (Baratz and Baratz in Hales, 1997, p. 4). …show more content…
The idea is that teachers create learning environments where students develop voice and

perspective and are allowed to participate (more fully) in multiple discourses available in

a learning context by not only consuming information but also through helping to

deconstruct and to construct it (Freire, 1998). Culturally relevant pedagogy is an

approach to teaching and learning that empowers students intellectually, socially,

emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and

attitudes (Grant & Ladson-Billings, 1997 p. 62). CRP can be utilized to address mis-

education in schools in that CRP aims to address the academic achievement gap by highlighting cultural differences of students as well as use cultural referents that students

bring to the classroom (Ladson-Billings, 1995) to direct the way in which lessons, in this

case, social studies lessons are taught to culturally diverse students. CRP places