Multicultural Education Review

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The what, why, and how of culturally responsive

teaching: international mandates, challenges, and
opportunities

Geneva Gay

To cite this article: Geneva Gay (2015) The what, why, and how of culturally responsive teaching:
international mandates, challenges, and opportunities, Multicultural Education Review, 7:3,
123-139, DOI: 10.1080/2005615X.2015.1072079

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/2005615X.2015.1072079

Published online: 04 Nov 2015.

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Multicultural Education Review, 2015
Vol. 7, No. 3, 123–139, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2005615X.2015.1072079

The what, why, and how of culturally responsive teaching:

international mandates, challenges, and opportunities
Geneva Gay*

University of Washington, USA

(Received 11 April 2015; accepted 6 June 2015)

This discussion acknowledges that culturally responsive teaching is relevant for

international contexts. However, it needs to be nuanced to fit the specific characteristics
and needs of these different settings, relative to societal dynamics, and student ethnic,
cultural, racial, immigration/migration, economic, and linguistic demographics. Con-
sequently, it offers both challenges and invitations for specific instructional practices.
The character and causes of these challenges and invitations are discussed, along with
some suggestion for how they can and should be addressed. They are analyzed through
four areas of thought and action essential to culturally responsive teaching. These are its
definitional attributes; the importance of teacher beliefs about and professional prepara-
tion in/for cultural diversity; the societal and school-based demographics and how these
affect culturally responsive teaching in action; and the profound influences that culture
has on teaching and learning. The argument is made that these complexities demand­­
­serious consideration in planning and implementing instructional programs and practic-
es for and about cultural diversity. It is imperative in so doing that educators’ decisions
and actions are guided by principles of local contextuality; plurality of instructional
methods and means informed by different configurations of students and societies in
different nations; and that cultural understanding is the baseline from which effective
educational decisions are made for diverse students, schools, and communities.
Keywords: teacher beliefs; student demographics; marginalization; culture and
­learning; international diversity; contextual specificity

The school underachievement of students from poor, urban, rural, and non-mainstream
ethnic, racial, and linguistic groups is a recurrent concern of educators in the United States,
and is growing in significance in many other countries around the world. These achieve-
ment gaps are broad-based, encompass more than academic performance (such as discipli-
nary referrals, resource allocations, curriculum designs, and the professional preparation
of teachers and administrators), and comprise the heart of social justice agendas within
the context of education (Darling Hammnod, 2010; Kozol, 2005). Other scholars are in-
creasingly pointing out that ethnic minority individuals, groups, and communities have
personal strengths, social capital and cultural funds of knowledge worthy of inclusion in
regular school programs and practices Gonzales, Mull, and Amanti (2005) (Lipka et al.,
1998; Tharp & Gallimore, 1991; www.nrcs.usda.gov). Although the United States has been
a leader in trying to solve these dilemmas, and its efforts extend back in time for genera-
tions, it has not achieved the success that is needed. Other countries from Europe, Asia, the
Americas, and Africa, along with Australia and New Zealand, have joined this cause, not so

*Email: [email protected]

© 2015 Korean Association for Multicultural Education.

124                G. Gay

much to mimic each other but to learn from each others’ efforts in creating more effective
ways to educate their respective “minoritized” student populations.
In some instances, these “minoritized groups” are even “numerical majorities” (such as
in South Africa and many schools in large cities and some states within the United States),
but are the “powerless, the under-privileged,” the marginalized, the largely unseen, and
unheard. Other human service professions, including social work, business, health care,
and religion, as well as esthetic endeavors such as the various fine arts, also are conced-
ing that they are not representing and servicing all of their clientele as well as they need
to when they use a common protocol or the same “standard of quality and normalcy” for
everyone. Businesses (at least in the United States) have long histories of using segmented
marketing (i.e. consumer-specific) to sell their services and products to different ethnic and
social class groups. In so doing they were (and are), in effect, acknowledging that different
cultures, social orientations, and lived experiences are determining influences in shaping
human values, beliefs, and behaviors. Products and services are more effective when their
creation and dissemination are informed by knowledge of the cultural values, heritages,
habits, and behaviors of different intended consumers.
Thus, culturally responsiveness is a rallying cry for many different service professions
in pursuit of more equity and effectiveness in the work they do for and with diverse groups.
However, the subsequent comments made here focus on only education. The United States
is the specific case example used to illustrate culturally responsive teaching, although the
general ideas and principles presented are applicable to other national contexts.

Definition
Culturally responsive teaching is an outgrowth of multicultural education. In the ­United
States, it focuses primarily on the instructional aspects of educating ethnic and racial
­minority groups (or groups of color) such as Indigenous (or Native), African, Asian, and
Latino Americans, various biracial groups, and recent immigrants. Multicultural Educa-
tion is more broad-based, giving attention to educational ideology, curriculum content,
policy-making, assessment, and teaching materials and resources along with instructional
engagements. Gay (2002, 2010b) defined culturally responsive teaching as using the herit-
ages, experiences, and perspectives of different ethnic and racial groups to teach students
who are members of them more effectively. Diverse cultures become conduits or filters for
teaching academic knowledge and skills students are expected to learn in school, as well
as enhancing their personal, social, cultural, and civic development. Other scholars, such
as Howard (2010), Ladson-Billings (2009), Lee (2007), Milner (2010), and Villegas and
Lucas (2002), agree with the essence of this definition although they may state it somewhat
differently. For example, this similarity, yet difference, is evident in Milner’s suggestion
that the goal is to teach racially diverse students both within and beyond their own cultural
and experiential contexts. He encoded this message in the statement, “Start where you and
they are but don’t stay there.”
Another important definitional dimension of culturally responsive teaching is mul-
ti-cultural competencies, or helping students learn more about their own and others’ cul-
tures, as part of their personal development and preparation for community membership,
civic engagement, and social transformation. This is needed because while many diverse
ethnic, racial, and cultural groups live in close geographic proximity in the Unites States
they do not know much about each other. Nor do they have much substantive and sustained
interactions. Students do not know as much as they need to about their own cultures, his-
tories, and heritages. And, most of what they think they know about others is distorted,
 Multicultural Education Review           125

stereotypical, or inaccurate, and acquired from mass media. In this sense, then, culturally
responsive teaching is both an epistemological and a methodological enterprise – that is, it
involved what to teach, why to teach, how to teach, and to whom to teach with respect to
ethnic, racial, cultural, and social diversity.
Culturally responsive teaching challenges many conventional teaching conceptions and
practices, and assumptions about ethnically, racially, socially, and culturally diverse peo-
ples. Among these challenged beliefs is the claim that the heritages of people of European
ancestry and middle class lifestyles are always normative and universal. These privileged
groups in the United States are Middle class, native English-speaking Whites, while the
“under-privileged” are various groups of color, poverty, and non-native English speakers
(many of whom are also recent immigrants), or use low status dialects. In the internation-
al context categories of “under-privileged and marginalized” student populations parallel
those of the USA in that they tend to be “numerical and linguistic minorities,” poor, indig-
enous peoples, and immigrants. The powerful and privileged groups in these countries set
the rules and regulations for how everyone else is to learn and behave based on their own
cultural standards.
Culturally responsive teaching argues, instead, that no ethnic group should have
­exclusive power, or total cultural and political dominion over others, even if it is a
­numerical majority. Rather, ethnic, racial, cultural, social, and linguistic pluralism is con-
sidered as a natural attribute of humankind, as a fundamental feature of the democrat-
ic ethos (whether as an ethic of community living or a structure of government), and as
a ­necessary ­component of quality education in both national and international contexts.
(Barber, 1994; Gay, 2010b). These ideas are captured cogently in the 1973 multicultural
education policy statement of the American Association for the Accreditation of Teacher
Education (AACTE). Entitled “No one Model American” it stated, in part, “If cultural plu-
ralism is so basic a quality of our culture, it must become an integral part of the educational
process at all levels” (p. 264).
Diverse groups continue to be instrumental in the development of virtually all countries
in the world. Of course, this diversity is constituted and configured differently in various
countries, but there is no doubt that it exists. At its most basic level this “presence of cultur-
al diversity” within and among nations differs by magnitude, duration, and effect. Students
in schools around the world should be taught about the multiple cultural and ethnic herit-
ages of nation states and the world, as well as the cultures and contributions of their own
ethnic groups. Therefore, culturally responsive teaching is an ideological and ethical, as
well as methodological enterprise. As such it contextualizes ideas of reality, representation,
equality, justice, social transformation, along with educational principles of personal rele-
vance, cultural significance, and academic agency and excellence into the specific ethnic
and racial demographics of particular nation states and their schools.

Ideological foundations of culturally responsive teaching

Numerous premises comprise the ideological anchors of culturally responsive teaching,
and provide directions for implementation actions. Four are presented here to provide a
“feel” for how advocates reason about the necessity, validity, and viability of this educa-
tional endeavor. They are mandates, challenges, and invitations for envisioning culturally
responsive teaching in international contexts. As invitations, they symbolize some consen-
sual ideas about why cultural diversity is essential to educational excellence for students
from various ethnic, racial, cultural, socioeconomic, and linguistic backgrounds. However,
these notions also pose some major challenges for instructional action, since the particular
126                G. Gay

circumstances and contingencies of local settings and situations must be attended to when
converting theoretical principles into instructional practices. Thus, discussions of interna-
tional culturally responsive teaching need to be dual-focused, with one emphasis being on
general ideas and principles, and the other on specific implementation demands of different
sociocultural, political, economic, geographic, and educational locations.

Beliefs and behaviors are interactive

One of the most important premises of culturally responsive education is teachers’ beliefs
about ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity determine their instructional behaviors. Much
research indicates that beliefs and behaviors are indeed interactive (see, for example Fives
& Gill, 2015; Gay, 2010a, 2010b, 2015; Stipek, 2002; Tyler, Stevens, & Uqdah, 2009). They
are mirror images of each other! In school situations, teachers who believe that s­ tudents
deserve high quality education and are capable of high levels of achievement provide them
with intellectually rigorous curriculum content, and imaginative, engaging, and u­ plifting
learning experiences. The converse is true as well; students who teachers ­believe are not
capable of high levels of academic performance are provided with low status, unchalleng-
ing teaching, and learning opportunities that emphasize conformity, r­egimentation, and
control (Oakes, 2005; Stipek, 2002).
In relation to teaching culturally diverse students, pejorative beliefs toward marginal-
ized perspectives, experiences, and peoples are often called “cultural bias.” Tyler, Stevens,
and Uqdah (2009) suggest strong cultural bias within education is embedded in and trans-
mitted through academic subject matter that gives almost exclusive emphasis to the con-
tributions of the majority culture or ethnic group; and through what is deemed appropriate
classroom behavior and demeanor. Thus, in the United States,

cultural bias in teaching occurs when classroom instruction, learning activities, materials, and
lessons largely reflect the contributions and/or cultural values and perspectives of the White,
Caucasian, or European Americans, and … [are] presented as an inherent promotion of the
perceived superiority and effectiveness of mainstream cultural modes of learning, thinking,
and performing. (Tyler, Stevens, & Uqdah, 2009, np)

The existence of culturally biased beliefs in education is probably a “global” or com-

prehensive phenomenon, with variation only at the level of their specific content, targeted
audiences, and styles of expressive manifestation.
Teachers’ beliefs and corresponding behaviors are not limited to academic and cogni-
tive pursuits; affective factors and personal effects are included as well. For example, Sti-
pek (2010) explains that teacher attitudes and behaviors shape the socio-emotional climate
of classrooms and the kind of affective feedback given to students. As such they “influ-
ence learning indirectly by affecting students’ own beliefs about their competencies, their
­expectations for success, and consequently their efforts and other achievement behaviors”
(p. 1). If students believe their teachers are confident in their ability to succeed in challeng-
ing learning situations with complex instructional materials, they do so with impressive
results. Similarly, teachers who expect students to have high moral standards and ethical
behaviors, and supportive relationships with each other create well-functioning coopera-
tive classroom communities of practice. Their students come to accept this is the natural
and normal way of engaging in the learning process. Teachers who believe learning should
be exciting as well as intellectually rigorous, create learning environments that are enjoy-
able and affectively engaging. But, if students believe their teachers do not think they are
 Multicultural Education Review           127

capable of learning and do not expect them to do so, they will not learn. This susceptibility
leads students to take on the beliefs, values, and priorities of teachers as their own, and
behave in accordance with their teachers’ personal and professional personas, emphases,
and expectations. These observations have been substantiated by other scholars such as
Fives and Gill (2015), Green (2009), Torff (2011), and McKinley (2010).
Positive, respectful relationships conveyed through teachers’ beliefs and related
behaviors give “students the sense of security they need to be active participants in class,
ask questions, and seek challenges-which in turn promote learning” (Stipek, 2010, p. 2).
Conversely, negative relationships silence, exclude, and discourage, or disinvite students
from being active participants in teaching-learning interactions, thereby diminishing their
learning opportunities. Disturbingly, much research within the United States indicates that
many teachers (who are predominantly White) have negative perceptions of and relation-
ships with students from marginalized ethnic groups (such as African, Asian, Latino, and
Indigenous or Native Americans), immigrants of color, and children of poverty. These
conditions are exacerbated further by being inadequately prepared to teach culturally and
racially diverse students effectively (Brown, 2009; Frankenberg & Siegel-Hawley, 2008;
Tettegah, 1996). Internationally, a related question worthy of pursuit is whether or not
similar trends are evident in different countries, and if so, which groups of students are so
targeted and how these teacher beliefs and practices are enacted instructionally.
Students’ susceptibilities to negative perceptions of their various identities are espe-
cially prominent during the formative years of the educative process, but are not limit-
ed to that phase. Khan and Ecklund (2013) and Steele (1997, 2010) indicate that college
and ­university students are similarly affected, even though the kind and magnitude of the
­effects vary, and are situational. For example, Steele’s studies of “stereotype threat” reveal
that their effects on college student performance are both academic and psycho-emotional,
and are profound.
Unfortunately, many European-American teachers and individuals in societies at
large are not very receptive to ethnic, racial, cultural, economic, and linguistic diversity.
This fact was affirmed by Wihbey (2014) in his analysis of data on racial attitudes in the
­United States, produced by the General Social Survey. He found that notable progress has
been made in racial relations over the years, and receptivity toward the general princi-
ple of integration has increased. However, racial biases and social distancing prevail with
­African-Americans at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. Undoubtedly, some members of
minority groups have similar attitudes, but confirming research is not as available and
compelling.
Many Whites are more concerned with preserving the status quo that ensures their
positions of ideological, structural, cultural, and political dominance. They associ-
­
ate ­diversity with deficiency and act accordingly in educational provisions by having
low-­performance expectations, and offering low status programs and practices to non-
mainstream students. Other undesirable behaviors include using controlling and conform-
ing approaches to teaching because of a belief that racially diverse students do not have
appropriate order and structure in their lives outside of school; relegating students of color
and poverty to insignificant learning experiences (such as rote memory, regurgitation, and
drill) because “they can’t do any better;” using harsher and more frequent disciplinary
actions because minority students cause more rule infractions, disruptions, and off-task
behaviors in school; applying disproportionate referrals of ethnically diverse students to
certain categories of special education (especially for African- and Latino-American boys)
because they cannot function adequately in regular classroom situations; and assuming
that not being a native speaker of a country’s national “academic” language is indicative
128                G. Gay

of low ­intelligence so such students should be “protected” from demanding and complex
instruction (Frankenberg, 2012; Oakes, 2005; Stipek, 2002; Tyler, Stevens, & Uqdah, 2009).
These non-committal and pathological beliefs and actions toward ethnically and racial-
ly diverse students are contradictory to culturally responsive teaching. They demean stu-
dents and diminish their learning potential simply by ignoring and distorting fundamental
aspects of their humanity and personhood. Culturally responsive teaching operates on the
belief that all students have the ability (albeit it is differentiated) to perform at high levels
of diversified achievement, and school programs and practices are obligated to facilitate
its realization. This “positive belief paradigm” includes recognizing the normalcy, value,
and strength of cultural diversity in the lives of individuals and nations, and engaging as-
sociated behaviors that use the cultures, histories, heritages, contributions, and experiences
of diverse ethnic groups as resources for teaching academic knowledge and skills (Gay,
2010a, 2010b; Howard, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 2009; Lee, 2007; Young, 2010).

Culture counts in teaching and learning

A second major premise of culturally responsive teaching is culture influences how and
what children learn both in and out of school, as well as how and what teachers teach
(Bruner,1996; Erickson, 2010; Gay, 2010b; Hollins, King, & Hayman, 1994; Pai, ­Adler,
& Shadiow, 2006; Spring, 1995). Schools have cultures, too! These are facsimiles of dom-
inant ethnic group, mainstream, or national cultures. Almost all that is done in the tradi-
tional educational enterprise exemplifies this single-group dominance. Yet, students from
different ethnic groups bring their cultural heritages and socializations to school with them.
These cultural orientations act as “filters” through which school content, protocols, and
practices are interpreted and converted to personal meaningfulness. Problems arise when
the cultures of students and schools are inconsistent, and diverse students are put in a
quandary of having to try to suspend, deny, or transcend their own cultural orientations
to function in the school culture that many do not even understand. Culturally respon-
sive teaching says this is unfair and un-doable (Erickson, 2010; Lee, 2007; Rosenberg,
­Westling, & McLeskey, 2008).
Students cannot easily separate themselves from their cultures at will. Even if they
could, why so they? After all, schools are public institutions, created to serve the edu-
cational needs of the public, are financially supported by the public, and are expected to
teach children their collective national heritages and identities. Therefore, the educational
enterprise should be culturally pluralistic in all its programs, policies, and practices, since
the “publics” of all nations are “pluralistic” in many dimensions. Even nations that claim
to be “of one blood” or a “single race” are not devoid of diversity because of the human
factor, and there is much intragroup variability. Some analysts even contend there is more
diversity within groups than among groups. Whether this is true or not is not the issue. The
point is that diversity and difference are perpetually present among human beings, both as
individuals and collectives. This diversity is more race-, ethnic-, and language-based in
some countries than in others, while the existence of gender, class, and ability differences,
both among and within groups, transcends national boundaries in fact but not kind.
To accommodate this diversity, culturally responsive teaching suggests that school
structures and programs should be synergistic, or composites of the diverse peoples and
influences that make up a nation and humanity. These cultural synergies should be man-
ifested in different ways. Among them are using a wide variety of teaching techniques
informed by knowledge of different cultural groups to accommodate varied learning
styles; teaching historical, social, cultural, and political content about ethnic groups within
 Multicultural Education Review           129

different ­community and school locations, as well as across the nation as a whole, and in
other countries; using varied cultural data-sets or texts (i.e. materials, activities, and expe-
riences), orientations, and behavioral styles to improve the relevance of school knowledge
for socially, ethnically, racially, and linguistically diverse students; and building knowl-
edge and skill bridges to help student cross cultural borders and negotiate functioning in
different cultural systems. Arguments in support of these pedagogical techniques and sali-
ent examples of them are prolific in educational scholarship in the USA and other Western
nations (see for example, Banks & Banks, 2004, 2012; Bennett, 2014; Tiedt & Tiedt, 2009),
and increasingly so globally (Banks, 2009).

The demographic imperative

Accomplishing the intended goals and objectives of culturally responsive education
(equity, excellence, and justice for ethnically and racially diverse students) is increasingly
challenging within any given nation, and even more so globally. Part of the difficulty is due
to the demographic complexity within and among nations. To date, multicultural education
and culturally responsive teaching have been crafted as intra-national endeavors – that is,
they deal with correcting the discriminatory ways particular “minoritized” groups are treat-
ed in educational institutions and societies at large. In the United States, positions of power
and privilege are dominated by middle- and upper class European-Americans, or Whites.
But it is becoming more difficult to readily identify and manage “minority” constituencies
in education because the world’s population is increasingly mobile and diversified both
within and among nations. This diversification gives new meaning to phenomena like race,
class, nationality, ethnicity, migration, immigration, mobility, and citizenship.
While both multicultural education and culturally responsive teaching originated in the
United States to deal primarily with race-based differences associated with “native” pop-
ulations, the global community is becoming increasingly concerned about how to be more
equitable and just toward recent diverse immigrant student populations. It is not that the US
is not grappling with immigration but the vantage points that come more readily to mind
are legal, political, and linguistic. In education issues related to immigrant children tend to
fall within the disciplinary jurisdiction of bilingual education and English as a second lan-
guage rather than multicultural education and/or culturally responsive teaching. But, divi-
sions between these domains are increasingly blurred as educators realize the challenges of
immigrant students are more than linguistic. For example, some immigrant groups (as well
as natives) encounter multiple marginalities involving race, ethnicity, culture, language,
and gender. They are configured differently depending on contextual factors in various
locations. Hence, race and gender issues are nuanced differently for Muslim, Christian,
and secular females, as well as the young and older, rural and urban, White and non-White
in the United States, France, England, Nigeria, and Brazil. Similarly, linguistic challenges
are different for teachers and their students whose ancestral origins are Asiatic, European,
African, Middle Eastern, and South American. Even the numerical size and variety of lan-
guages and cultures in specific schools create different challenges for educators. The differ-
ent points of emphasis and departure in teaching they demand have serious consequences
for constructing coherent discourses about, and viable practices for culturally responsive
teaching locally, nationally, and internationally.
Another dimension of the demographic imperative that is a strong stimulant for cul-
turally responsive teaching is the mixtures and movements of populations within nations.
Some countries (such as China) are now experiencing rapid urbanization with mass move-
ments of populations from rural to urban areas, while others (such as the United States)
130                G. Gay

went through this transition many years ago. Populations are also moving, with increasing
degrees of frequency, from one city or region to another for a variety of reasons like em-
ployment, leisure, and living in multiple domiciles. Titus’ (2007) graphic description of
student mobility in the United States is illustrative of these trends:

The United States, with about one fifth of the population moving annually, has one of the
highest national mobility rates in the world. As a result, student mobility is widespread. It is
increasingly less common for children to attend school from kindergarten through high school
in the same district or even the same state. Most students make at least one non-promotional
school change while in basic education. About 15–18% of school-age children change resi-
dences each year. … Research suggests that school change may affect students psychological-
ly, socially, and academically. … Transience and high student mobility may create distractions
and disruptions that impact classrooms negatively, limit continuity of instruction, and dimin-
ish student engagement. … Students are mobile for many reasons, mostly related to family
moves resulting from job changes, divorce, or family separation. Students are displaced by
natural disasters. Homeless students move from shelter to shelter. Children of migrant farm
workers move with the harvests. Students placed in foster care often change schools. The
children of immigrants enroll in a new school as they enter a new land. The children of diplo-
mats, missionaries, military personnel, and executives of international companies are mobile
on a global scale. … Some of these students face a number of challenges, including a sense
of rootlessness and difficulty in finding personal identity. Unfortunately, there seems to be a
general lack of awareness and sensitivity in the education community about these children and
their needs. (pp. 82, 84, 85)

These shifting population movements need to be addressed explicitly in culturally

­responsive teaching. How its ideology is understood, and for whom it is intended at any
given time and context have profound effects on its embodiment in practice. Culturally
responsive teaching practices should be as diversified as the needs they intend to address,
and the students expected to be their benefactors.
Immigration is also changing directions and dimensions as more and more different
people join the exoduses and sojourns, and more countries become desirable destinations.
The general historical and global migration routes from village and farm to city and fac-
tory, and from “non-West to West” are shifting, too. For example, as the United States
evolved from an agrarian to first an industrial and then a post-industrial society, there were
major population movements from South to North, and from rural to urban. Now there is
much population shifting from North to South, and both within and from cities to suburbs.
While immigration and migration are global phenomena, their magnitude and composition
have some national uniqueness. The geographic location and percentage of different immi-
grants in countries and regions of the world reflect their countries of origin. For instance,
in the United States immigrants from Asian and Pacific Island countries are clustered pri-
marily in the Western part of the country, while those from Mexico are concentrated in
the Southwest. Immigrants from European countries initially settled mostly in the Eastern
regions of the United States, and Middle Eastern immigrants are now located largely in the
Great Lakes areas. New Zealand and Australia have many recent immigrants from China,
India, and Southern Pacific countries. Italy’s non-White immigrant population is mostly
from northern African origins. England has high percentages of Caribbean, Middle East-
ern, African, and European immigrants. Canada’s Caribbean and Asian immigrants settle
primarily in large metropolitan areas across the southern sections of the country.
According to the Global Commission on International Migration (2005), there are
more than 200 million migrants worldwide. While immigrants are present in all types of
countries more than half of them are in developed nations. These populations place heavy
 Multicultural Education Review           131

demands on the receiving countries, including their educational systems. According to

­Disisleri Rakenligi (2005) meeting these challenges

requires meticulous analysis of the issue, considering the fact that we live in such a globally
interconnected world that any decision taken in one country for action will have to take into
account the possible effects it may give rise [to] in another.

When this cautionary note is applied to schooling it means how educators envision
enacting culturally responsive teaching will have to be affected more and more by different
configurations of the continually evolving diasporic and minoritized student populations.
Culturally responsive education has the potential to make some worthy contributions
to these social dynamics by teaching students how to engage positively with their own
and others’ racial, social, cultural, experiential, linguistic, and ancestral origins. Its major
objectives include understanding and honoring the reality and relevance of ethnic and cul-
tural diversity in the lives of all people and nations, developing cross-cultural competence,
and improving the multidimensional achievement of students from diverse ethnic and cul-
tural groups who historically have been maligned and marginalized. Immigrant popula-
tions complicate and problematize that part of culturally responsive teaching devoted to
helping students developed competence for functioning effectively in different cultural
systems, including their own indigenous groups and native nations, and the dominate cul-
tures of their new nations.
To date little educational research, scholarship, and discourse exist about the need for
various immigrant and native minority groups to develop competences for relating to each
other, and how this can be accomplished. Yet, deep tensions, anxieties, biases, hostilities,
and misunderstanding exist among certain ethnic and racial minority groups within dif-
ferent countries, and among immigrants in various parts of the global community. These
controversies comprise another imperative and complicating facet of culturally responsive
teaching in both national and international contexts. They suggest that bicultural mastery
along a minority – majority cultural continuum is no longer sufficient. Rather, students
must to be multicultural and develop competencies about much more complex ethnic,
racial, and cultural dynamics because they are routinely living in and encountering wider
ranges of diverse peoples and experiences within their countries of origin, host or adopted
nations, and the global community.
More study of minority – minority interactions and relationships in both national and
international contexts also should be regular parts of multicultural competencies taught to
students. For example, in the United States African-American youth need to learn more
about and relate better with Latino Americans and Asian Americans, and vice versa. The
various specific ethnic groups within general ethnic clusters (i.e. Asian Americans, Native
Americans, etc.) need to know more about each other. Hence, Mexicans, Cubans, Spanish,
and Venezuelans l earning about their specific versions of Latino culture and heritage. How
these intra- and intergroup multicultural competencies are accomplished in instruction-
al practice needs to be differentiated to accommodate current demographic and mobility
patterns, and historical legacies of educational, social, and political treatment of diverse
populations within various nations. This differentiation is necessary to be consistent with
culturally responsive teaching mandates of making explicit the targeted groups of students
to be served, and using specifically identified cultural contexts when designing instruction-
al programs and practices for and about ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity. It represents
a significant shift in teaching diverse students away from promulgating imprecise general-
ities and claims of universalities that are supposed to be applicable to all human beings;
132                G. Gay

attempting to be color blind and cultural neutral or mute in enacting educational policies
and practices; and looking for best teaching practices that are effective for all students in
all circumstances.
Achieving these goals includes developing complex and comprehensive bodies of
knowledge and skills that are academic as well as social, political, moral, personal, in-
tra-cultural and intercultural, national and international. Further explanations of and prac-
tice suggestions for these elements of culturally responsive teaching can be gleaned from
sources such as the Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education (Banks & Banks,
2004); Handbook of Urban Education (Milner & Lomotey, 2014); Standing Together
(Klug, 2012); Achieving Equity for Latino Students (Contreras, 2011); Teaching with Vi-
sion (Sleeter & Cornbleth, 2011; Educating Asian Americans (Endo & Rong, 2013); and
How to Teach Students Who Don’t Look Like You (Davis, 2012).
The complexity of the need for, and actually implementing culturally responsive teach-
ing is evident in many ways. One of these is policies of how various countries name their
ethnic and racial demography, and embed it (or not) in their value systems, political prior-
ities, and educational practices. As a result of her study of how 141 countries identify and
codify ethnicity in their census data Morning (2008) suggests that

Despite the variety of terminologies and approaches to ethnic enumeration taken by censuses
worldwide, … global comparisons … have much to offer. This is particularly true as a grow-
ing number of countries face similar issues related to ethnic enumeration, such as immigrant
inflows or calls for strengthened antidiscrimination protections. At the same time there is a
growing body of academic literature that explores the impact of governmental activities such
as census-taking on notions of identity and group belonging. … The realization that official
ethnic enumeration is not simply a scientific measurement of objective fact, but that it simulta-
neously shapes the identities it seeks to capture, provides another reason for considering how
and why diverse nations grapple with the task. (pp. 263–264)

Morning adds further that because how and why different nations construct and count
ethnicity, and ethnic terminology is produced by particular forms of social stratification,
understanding these practices requires “comprehensive data on historical, social, econom-
ic, and political forces” (p. 264) operating in different nations.
Morning’s (2008) research makes it clear that diversity constructions are political, as
well as cultural, and that the politics of difference (and how they vary by nations) have to
be considered seriously in constructing both national and international educational poli-
cies, programs, and practices about cultural diversity. Yet, these difficulties do not preclude
the existence of shared fundamental concepts and concerns about difference, and as precur-
sors of constructive cross-national educational action. While not easily done, it is possible
to achieve cross-national consensus on some, but not necessarily all, conceptions and com-
ponents of culturally responsive education for diverse student populations.

Comprehensiveness
Culturally responsive teaching is not limited to diversifying academic content in select
subject matter in select schools, as many educators seem to believe. In conceptualizing
the challenge of improving broad-based achievement of low-performing ethnically diverse
students, and envisioning how to address it, another important premise of culturally re-
sponsive teaching emerges. It is, school achievement is more than academics, and as such
it involves more than mastering subject matter content knowledge. In other words, there are
many different reasons why ethnically diverse students are not performing well in school,
 Multicultural Education Review           133

and there are different types of worthy achievement to be cultivated. To correct these prob-
lems require comprehensive and systemic knowledge, thought and action, complemented
by an activated code of ethics heavily grounded in equality, justice, and empowerment.
Psychological and sociological research has long since established the fact that learn-
ing is a psycho-emotional and sociocultural, as well as an intellectual enterprise. As such
relational factors like security, respect, caring, relevance, knowledge of protocols, cul-
ture, and context, and contextual influences like various “locations and positionalities”
are critical to learning success (Ayers, 2004a, 2004b; Gay, 2010b; Moll, 2014; Pai, Adler,
& Shadiow, 2006; Pang, Nembhard, & Holowach, 2006; Pasi, 2001; Rogoff, 2003; Zins,
et al., 2004). Yet, recent attempts at resolving the persistent achievement gaps between
mainstream and minority students in the United States seem to have forgotten these re-
search findings. Almost exclusive attention is given to academic content mastery. Cultur-
ally responsive teaching does not oppose this emphasis per se, but suggests that it is not
enough to solve the achievement dilemmas of marginalized, underachieving students of
color. Instead, corrective strategies need to be comprehensive and address the whole child.
This means attending to intellectual, personal, social, cultural, political, and ethical skills,
perspectives, and experiences, simultaneously. (Ayers, 2004b; Gay, 2010b; Hooks, 1994;
Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2009).
Teachers, multicultural competency is imperative to meeting these needs of diverse stu-
dents. Most of them are taught by teachers from ethnic, racial, and cultural groups different
from their own. Even though these teachers may have good intentions they do not have the
necessary attitudes, values, knowledge, and skills for teaching cultural diversity. Culturally
responsive teaching does not restrict this needed competency to shared social class, ethnic
identity, and cultural group membership between students and teachers. It argues, instead,
that with sufficient training teachers can learn to be effective cross-racially, cross-culturally,
cross-ethnically, cross-socially, and cross-linguistically.
Some researchers have demonstrated that learning in culturally supportive school and
classroom environments improves multiple kinds of achievement for students from various
minority and marginalized groups (Au, 2011; Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Gay, 2010b; Lee,
2007; Lipka et al., 1998; McCarty, 2002; Moses & Cobb, 2001). This support takes the
form of positive beliefs of teachers and administrators about diversity, along with cultural-
ly informed materials and resources, content, and techniques used in teaching. Conversely,
when students are exposed to learning environments, experiences, and materials that ha-
bitually ignore or denigrate their ethnic groups’ identities, experiences, and contributions
in society their school performance is negatively affected in many ways. Among these are
decrease effort or time on learning tasks, poor attendance and school persistence records,
more disciplinary problems, and lower grades and test scores (Banks & Banks, 2004).
Another contributing factor to school success that is routinely oversighted in discus-
sions about teaching marginalized students (at least in the US) is who has access to “school
social and cultural capital,” and who does not. This is knowledge and skills about how to
function in school settings that are not formally or explicitly taught by teachers, but are
informally acquired through interactions with others (such as parents, guardians, and older
siblings) who learned them through lived experiences. They include how to study effec-
tively (especially when one has to transcend culturally learned study styles); test-taking
skills such as how to read test items strategically; how to readjust one’s personal and cul-
tural work habits to match the rhythms, routines, and ethos of educational institutions; and
how to master “school-speak,” or ways of communicating that are appropriate for schools,
sometimes called “academic English,” code-shifting, and/or cultural border crossing. As
Holliday (1985) explained, the procedural and behavioral protocols and demands that
134                G. Gay

surround teaching and learning are critical because they can determine whether or not stu-
dents gain access to the substance or content of teaching. They are places where significant
levels of school failure or success occur. Therefore, culturally responsive teaching should
include formal and informal, content and process, and relational as well as informational
aspects of learning. Undoubtedly, schools in all countries have their own versions of social
and cultural capital, as do different ethnic, racial, and cultural groups. These should be
analyzed for similarities and differences as discussions about and possibilities for cross-
national culturally responsive teaching are examined.
Conventional schooling places many culturally different students in precarious posi-
tions by demanding that they function in ways contradictory to their home and community
cultures. These students often feel that they have to choose between the mores of their fam-
ilies and social friends, and school values and norms. For many of them, whatever choices
they make they lose something important to their human potential and well-being. If they
choose to conform to mainstream school expectations they may compromise allegiance to
their families and friends; if they choose to abide by their cultural socialization they risk
alienation, marginalization, and failure in schools. Other students are put in an untenable
position because they simply do not know how to move back and forth among cultural
systems.
Culturally responsive teaching suggests that these dilemmas are unnecessary, inherent-
ly unfair, and avoidable. Students should never be put in a position of having to sacrifice
their indigenous or home cultural heritages in order to acquire an education. A more rea-
sonable option is for schools to provide opportunities and assistance for ethnically diverse
students to maintain their own cultural heritages and languages along with learning about
other heritage groups and histories, and their nations’ mainstream cultures, while simulta-
neously mastering academic knowledge and skills.
Consequently, a central theme in culturally responsive teaching is helping
­students ­become cultural border crossers. The crossing borders films produced by
National ­Geographic Education are a useful tool for initiating these learning processes.
Dietrich and Ralph (1995) suggested also using literary works for students to gain cultural
­insights about different groups and societies, and to dispel cultural myths and biases. They
­explained further that, “one of the values of seeing commonalities across cultures is the
avenue it creates for students to establish lines of communication with diverse cultures”
(p. 3). Living personal stories of how others have navigated cultural collisions and different
cultural systems are helpful, too. The intent of these instructional strategies is to provide
students with cultural anchors and opportunities, with mirrors of themselves and windows
of insights for learning beyond self – that is, acquiring deeper knowledge and appreciation
of their own cultural heritages, and skills to transcend their current circumstances and
capabilities. Accomplishing these goals are other reasons why genuine cultural responsive
teaching is, of necessity, comprehensive!

Plurality is fundamental
Teaching diverse students well requires the use of a wide variety of instructional strategies.
The guiding principle here can be stated more specifically as using multiple culturally
diverse teaching methods and materials to achieve common learning outcomes. Simply
put, children learn differently for many reasons, and in many ways. Cultural and ethnic
socialization accounts for much of this difference, but individuality is important, too. An
impressive body of research exists that characterizes the learning styles associated with
race, class, culture, ethnicity, and gender, along with providing suggestions for designing
 Multicultural Education Review           135

instructional practices that are responsive to them (Cassidy, 2004; Gross, 2014; Gurain &
Stevens, 2010; Maldonado Torres, 2011; Shade, 1997; Tharp & Gallimore, 1991).
A persistent message conveyed through research and scholarship is that there is no one
best, or universal, way of teaching diverse students. Instead, diversity among students de-
mands plurality in instructional practices. This plurality includes different kinds of content
in subjects taught; different kinds of learning materials and resources used for teaching and
learning; different invitations and opportunities to participate in learning; different kinds
of praise and criticism feedback provided; different kinds of performance assessments;
different kinds of interactions between students and teachers and among students; different
methods for conveying what needs to be known, what is known, and what one can or can-
not do. Thus, knowledge and methodological plurality in effective teaching and learning
for, about, and through cultural plurality is mandatory! (Banks & Banks, 2012; Bennett,
2014; Gay, 2010b; Milner & Lomotey, 2014; Tiedt & Tiedt, 2009)
Another compelling reason for plurality in teaching diverse students is the different
subjects and skills taught and the times, locations, contexts, purposes, and circumstances
of teaching. For example, teaching for cultural competence among elementary students in
social studies is nuanced somewhat differently from the same goal in the same subject for
secondary school and college students. Any and all multicultural goals and objectives must
be taught differently in classroom and school communities single group minority popu-
lations, compared to multiple minority groups of students, majority group students, and
majority–minority groups class compositions. Even the particular minority group being
taught (i.e. Korean American, Chinese American, Mexican American, biracial, multilin-
gual, immigrant, etc.) demands and deserves different instructional strategies. Different
subjects also present challenges and invitations for differentiating culturally responsive
teaching practices.
Furthermore, culturally responsive teaching is not, as many assume, something that
happens only occasionally and in a few select areas of teaching and learning, such as
including more ethnic authors and contributions in the literature, reading, history, math,
music, and visual arts curricula, or only when ethnically diverse students are at crisis in
school, either academically or behaviorally. Instead, it should permeate all dimensions of
teaching and learning all the time for all the students, but differently. Since others in the
educational enterprise besides classroom teachers also “teach” in that they affect students,
even if indirectly, they should be culturally responsive in doing their jobs as well. For
example, school administrators need to be culturally responsive in performing their leader-
ship roles and working with different ethnic communities; counselors in advising students;
instructional aides in assisting students and teachers; athletic coaches in building teams;
secretarial staffs in the support services they provide for other school staffs, students, fam-
ilies, and communities; evaluators in designing, administering, and interpreting measures
of student and teacher performance; and transportation personnel in transporting students
to and from school. These “arenas” “of teaching and learning should implement area-,
need-, or location-specific culturally responsive practices.” The fact that these practices are
crafted differently in various national contexts add more complicating dimensions to the
plurality of culturally responsive teaching in action.
Beyond these general guidelines it is difficult to specify what actual culturally ­responsive
teaching practices are appropriate for whom without violating one of its major principles.
This is the idea of contextual specificity in the design and implementation of instruction-
al strategies. Actualizing culturally responsive teaching is contingent upon the specific
needs, ethnic and racial demographics, and existential realities of its intended ­recipients,
whether these are diverse minority and/or majority students, curricular content, classroom
136                G. Gay

and school climates, or student–teacher relationships. Since these “arenas of educational

­practice” and their memberships are incredibly diverse and perpetually changing it is virtu-
ally impossible to design actual culturally responsive teaching strategies that are valid and
authentic in abstraction, or at a distance from the contexts in which they are to be used. The
best the distant analyst can do is offer general guidelines for the on-site practitioners to use
in making their own decisions for their own students, purposes, and circumstances (that
is, building their own culturally responsive capacity, agency, and a­ utonomy). This, in turn,
generates other layer of plurality. Using localized contextual influences in creating educa-
tional programs and practices that are more effective for culturally, ethnically, racially, and
socially diverse students is the epitome of the plurality mandate in culturally responsive
teaching, both nationally and internationally.

Conclusion
Although the mere idea of it, and the demands it imposes for envisioning ways to achieve
better learning can be intimidating, culturally responsive teaching benefits everyone! It
improves the educational achievement of ethnically, culturally, racially, linguistically, and
socially diverse students. This improvement is evident in many different areas of school
performance, including increased attention spans; higher subject matter grades and test
scores; more and better quality participation in instructional interactions; more reading
engagement and comprehension; more detailed and coherent writing; greater mastery of
higher order thinking and analytical skills; greater satisfaction with schooling; and higher
academic self-concepts and feelings of efficacy, agency, and empowerment (Au, 2011;
Banks, 2009; Banks & Banks, 2004; Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Gay, 2010b; Lee, 2007;
Tharp & Gallimore, 1991).
The body of validating research and practice is not as extensive and comprehensive as
it needs to be. But, it is growing, and it consistently shows positive effects of culturally
responsive teaching on student achievement across different areas of learning, levels of
schooling, and ethnic groups. More research is needed about different groups of students
and domains of learning both within and among nations. But a compelling message is
already apparent – that is, culturally responsive teaching really does have transformative
potential for eliminating disparities in many kinds of achievement for ethnically and cul-
turally diverse students. This benefit should be enough of a catalyst for the international
community of educators to proceed vigilantly in pursuing the extent to which culturally
responsive teaching can be a viable and vibrant cross-national endeavor without compro-
mising the integrity of its mandates for localized context specificity.

Notes on contributor
Geneva Gay is a professor of Education at the University of Washington-Seattle where she teaches
multicultural education and general curriculum theory. She is nationally and internationally known
for her scholarship in multicultural education and culturally responsive teaching, particularly as they
relates to curriculum design, teacher preparation, classroom instruction, and the intersections of cul-
ture, race, ethnicity, teaching, and learning. She has published numerous articles and book chapters,
and several books, one of which is Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Practice, & Research
(Teachers College Press). This book received an Outstanding Writing Award from the American
Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). Two of her other notable awards are the
Mary Anne Raywid Award for Distinguished Scholarship in the Field of Education, presented by
the Society of Professors of Education, and the first Multicultural Educator Award presented by the
National Association of Multicultural Education.
 Multicultural Education Review           137

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