Cultural Responsiveness

Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching and Learning (CLR)

Cultural responsiveness is a movement led by people who are singularly focused on quality, equitable, and liberating education for all students. If you are committed to validating, affirming, building, and bridging, then you can be a leader in Culturally and Linguistically Responsive (CLR) pedagogy.

— Dr. Sharroky Hollie, Strategies for Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching and Learning

The validation and affirmation of the home (indigenous) culture and home language for the purposes of building and bridging the student to success in the culture of academia and mainstream society.”

— Dr. Sharroky Hollie, Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching and Learning: Classroom Practices for Student Success (2017)

What it means to be CLR:

  • CLR is going where the students are culturally and linguistically, for the purpose of bringing them where they need to be academically.

  • CLR is the opposite of the sink-or-swim approach to teaching and learning or traditional schooling.

Ultimately, CLR is a challenge to your existing pedagogy. Becoming culturally responsive means that your instruction changes for the better. CLR can renovate or overhaul your instruction, depending on where you are in your teaching and where you want to be at the end of the day. CLR is rooted in seeing and feeling the change for yourself. In other words, you can see the difference without any external endorsement or research, because you know that it feels right.

See https://www.culturallyresponsive.org/ for more information.

Validate, Affirm, Build and Bridge (VABB)

Validate and Affirm (VA)—make culturally and linguistically legitimate and positive, that which has been illegitimate and negative by the institution of education and mainstream media; understanding the complexity of culture and the many forms it takes (including age, gender, and social class), which will then create opportunities for making meaningful experiences in school

  • Validation — the intentional and purposeful legitimization of the home culture and language of students

  • Affirmation — the intentional and purposeful effort to reverse the negative stereotypes of non-mainstream cultures and languages portrayed in historical perspectives

Build and Bridge (BB)—the cultural knowledge that needs to be developed and connected to academic use, within the school context, after students’ cultures have been validated and affirmed

  • Building—understanding and recognizing the cultural and linguistic behaviors of students and using those behaviors to foster rapport and relationships with them

  • Bridging—providing the academic and social skills students will need to have success beyond the classroom; evident when students demonstrate they can navigate school and mainstream culture successfully

Being culturally responsive means that you plan to validate, affirm, build, and bridge your students (or people in general) when you talk to them, in how you relate to them, and in how you teach them. We all have different cultural behaviors based on who we are and how we got here. We want everyone to understand and know when to use the most appropriate cultural and linguistic behaviors for any situation, without losing who they are culturally and linguistically.

See https://www.culturallyresponsive.org/vabb for more information.