Looking Back to Move Forward: Exploring Urban Secondary Education Teacher Perceptions of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

This study draws on Gloria Ladson-Billings’ theory of culturally relevant pedagogy to explore how faculty at a private, Catholic, low-income serving, secondary school translated this theory into practice. Through a three-part action research methodology, the authors sought to answer two primary ques...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEducation and urban society Vol. 56; no. 3; pp. 263 - 285
Main Authors Sellers, Kathleen M., MacKenzie, Ann Haley
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.03.2024
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Action research
Catholics
College faculty
Culturally Relevant Education
Educational Environment
Fractured
Low income groups
Pedagogy
Professional development
Professional training
Research methodology
Roman Catholic schools
School environment
Secondary education
Secondary schools
Teacher education
Teachers
Teaching
Teaching Methods
Urban schools
urban secondary education
reflective practice
culturally relevant pedagogy
annual planning
cultural studies
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Summary:This study draws on Gloria Ladson-Billings’ theory of culturally relevant pedagogy to explore how faculty at a private, Catholic, low-income serving, secondary school translated this theory into practice. Through a three-part action research methodology, the authors sought to answer two primary questions: How indicative are annual plans of culturally relevant pedagogy? How is culturally relevant pedagogy reflected in instructional practice? The data revealed faculty were not uniformly aware of the meaning or implications of culture nor culturally relevant pedagogy and incorporated such fractured knowledge into their annual plans to a limited degree, if at all. When those practices took place, they were often precipitated by student requests and linked directly with specific events in students’ lives in or outside the school environment. Additionally, faculty did not express a strong association between school-wide initiatives that were meant to be culturally relevant and the pedagogical work conducted in their classes. Further, Faculty of Color exhibited a greater level of critical consciousness and enumerated significantly more examples of cultural work than White faculty. Recommendations are made for additional research as well as targeted professional development, changes in staff learning practices, and fairer distributions of cultural work across faculty.
ISSN:0013-1245
1552-3535
DOI:10.1177/00131245221121668