Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) uses the

classroom to not only teach the concepts and
skills of the discipline, but also to help students
recognize ways in which to use these concepts
and skills in the real worlds that students come
from and live in. An expansion of CRP is
Culturally Sustained Pedagogy (CSP), which
encourages teachers and students learn not only
privileged knowledge, but also foster the growth
of students current cultural knowledges.
Teachers use the community culture(s) to show
students how disciplinary concepts are already
in their world, then help students learn how to
use these concepts to understand (and possibly
change) the world around them.
CSP works by cultivating an environment of
acceptance in the classroom. Teachers work to
understand students cultures and bring elements
of those cultures into the classroom. For
example, teachers could choose to use culturally
relevant contexts (such as poverty, health issues,
spirituality, discrimination, etc.) to help students
learn disciplinary concepts.
When students feel their culture, and their
identities, are valued, they are more likely to
care about the material and work toward
learning it. Further, by connecting disciplinary
concepts to the experiences and knowledges
students already have, teachers help students see
the relevance of school learning to their own
lives.
Teachers who use CSP in their classrooms
engage these three factors:
1. Same high expectations for all students:
Teachers model, scaffold, and clarify
behavioral, academic, and social
expectations for students, using
students strengths as starting points.
2. Cultural and linguistic competence:
Teachers establish and cultivate
school/home relationships, and reshape
prescribed curriculum to build on
students funds of knowledge. Teachers
encourage students to use home
languages and symbolic systems, as well
as offer opportunities for students to
express themselves in multiple modes of
creating.
3. Critical consciousness: Teachers share
classroom power with students, and
make external power structures explicit
for students.
References
Gutirrez, Rochelle. "Context Matters: How
Should We Conceptualize Equity in
Mathematics Education?." Equity in
Discourse for Mathematics Education.
Springer Netherlands, 2012. 17-33.
Gutirrez, Rochelle. "Embracing Nepantla:
Rethinking" Knowledge" and its Use in
Mathematics Teaching." Journal of
Research in Mathematics Education 1.1
(2012): 29-56.
Gutstein, Eric. "Connecting community, critical,
and classical knowledge in teaching
mathematics for social justice."Alternative
Forms of Knowing (in) Mathematics.
SensePublishers, 2012. 300-311.
Gutstein, Eric Rico. "Mathematics as a weapon
in the struggle." Opening the Cage.
SensePublishers, 2012. 23-48.
Ladson-Billings, Gloria. "Toward a theory of
culturally relevant pedagogy."American
educational research journal 32.3 (1995):
465-491.
Paris, Django. Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy:
A Needed Change in Stance, Terminology,
and Practice. Educational Researcher 41.3
(2012): 93-97.
Rodriguez, Nidia. Searching for a Culturally
Relevant Pedagogy in a High School
Algebra Support Classroom. Diss. 2012.
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy

In practice (Mathematics)
Teachers allow students to explore
multiple ways of showing work for
commonly misunderstood problems
(such as inverse functions or
exponential equations). Teachers can
provide examples of different cultures
ways of solving such problems.
When learning about graphs, have
students explore different relationships
in their family or community. Use these
relationships to show how graphs
model real-world data. (For example,
my graph could show year by month,
and decibel level of my parents
conversations).















In practice (English)
Students pick an historical landmark,
place, or artifact that has meaning for
them and use that as a basis for a
research project/paper.
Students identify a theme in their life
that is important to them (family,
independence, perseverance, etc.),
then find a couple books (one from
each of 2-3 categories) and explain
how the books relate to their theme.


In combination: Lessons to bridge math and English
Students create their own word problems for a mathematics unit, using their cultural knowledges
and experiences. Peers attempt to solve the problems, without help from other students or
teachers (simulating test-environments), noting what they dont understand and what was difficult.
Students then use their word problems as the start of English projects to explain to their peers the
elements of their culture (food, language, material objects, rituals, attitudes, beliefs, worldviews,
measuring systems, etc.). Peers then go back to the word problems to solve them, noting whether
understanding the cultural context helped them solve the problems, and reflecting on cultural
values in a math class. Lesson here.
Have students analyze building schematics and information (ex. support beam placement,
materials, roof angles, costs of labor, time to completion, intended use, etc.) in order to decide
whether there are fundamental differences in structural quality/longevity between/within
neighborhoods. In English, students explore different experiences (including interviewing people in
the community) of housing and analyze whether these texts reflect the kinds of findings in
mathematics classes.