EDU 555

CURRICULUM AND
INSTRUCTION ARTICLE REVIEW
TITLE : PREPARING FOR
CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE
TEACHING
STUDENTS NAME : HASNUL SYAHIRAH BINTI
MOHD FAUZI
STUDENT ID. NO : 2013240728
GROUP

: ED 260/ 4A

LECTURERS NAME : MOHAMAD HISYAM ISMAIL

1.0 INTRODUCTION
Preparing for Culturally Responsive Teaching was an article by
Genera Gay (2001) from Washington University, Seattle published in his
recent book entitle Culturally Responsive Teaching.
Based on the article, the author focussed on elevating the school
success of ethnically diverse students through culturally responsive
teaching and to prepare preservice teacher in education programs with
understanding, methods, attitudes, knowledge and skills to achieve the
focussed area. For me, this article is really important since in education,
it involve variety of culture where the students actually comes from
different background and each of the culture may bring specific style in
their learning process. So, teachers who are actually have direct
implication for teaching and learning need to know the ways to deliver the
contents, understanding the cultural diversity that exist between the
students or in other words to prepare effective cultural teaching to meet
and elevate the school success.

2.0 SUMMARY
In this article, the author focussed on teachers who need to prepare
an effective teaching method for culturally diverse students in school. In
order to investigate this specific approach to effective teaching for
multicultural students, the author had done the research findings,
theoretical claims, practical experiences and educators personal stories
researched and worked with low scorer African, Asian, Latino and Native
American scholars. These data were collected from individuals from wide
range of disciplinary backgrounds. There were five vital components of
culturally responsive teaching examined. Firstly, develop a knowledge
basis about cultural diversity, designing culturally relevant curricula for the
second element, demonstrating cultural caring and build a learning

community, teachers communicate with students from diverse ethnic and

how to give instructions to culturally diversity students.
The first element that being examined is developing a cultural
diversity knowledge where teachers need to be prepared by having
knowledge about their students cultural variation. First of all, teachers
need to have a deep comprehension about the cultural characteristic and
contribution of variety groups of ethnic. For instance cultural values of the
ethnic groups, traditions, type of language that they used, their learning
style and contribution. According to Geneva, in order to produce culturally
effective teaching, teachers need to identify detail information about the
particular culture of the ethnic group. They need to have sufficient
information and facts about particular culture and do should not simply
shallow the information taken from any sources without investigate the
validity of the information for example mass media.
Geneva (2001) states that teacher need to be creative by designing
the culturally relevant curriculum and instruction that resemble the
cultural diversity and ethnic of students. Actually, the existing curriculum
that provide chances for teaching cultural variety is the formal plan
governed by the education system which is the textbooks. The textbook
improved over time to suit the cultural diversity, but still give unfavourable
result. So, teachers actually play an important role on how to be creative
and make any changes on the curriculum design and instructional
materials to suit with the learning style of multicultural students.
Next, the third element of culturally responsive teaching is providing
cultural caring and building a learning community where students need to
use their own culture and practices to develop their intelligent and
educational success. This can be done by preparing a classroom
environment that are favourable for diversity scholars to learn. Cultural
caring can be done by teachers where they need to put much attention
and care about cultural diversity in classroom and put on effort thoroughly
in order to elevate their students success in academic. It requires teachers
to think strategically and use their understanding on how to perform in the

best interest of the students. While, for building a learning community

among diverse learner a group role like mutual aid society is used which
all the participants need to participate and responsible for aiding each
other to perform a certain task ( Geneva,2001). According to Escalante
and Dirmann (1990), this group role showed the encouraging result where
the students success have been confirmed in Latinos high school
Mathematics.
The

fourth

element

that

been

highlighted

is

cross

cultural

communication. Watson and Montagu (1979) states that communication is

the base of interacting and the basis of community where this help
determine success level of students and often well-designed on how good
the teachers interact with them.

One of the specific component of

communicating style is the protocol of participants in discourse. This

specific component determine whether students get involve in the
education or not. For instance, the communicating style of most ethnic
colour in the United States are more favourable, where students are able
to participate in the learning process where teacher give permission for
students to engage with them by asking questions, giving their opinion
and teachers give feedback to them.
The last element to culturally responsive teaching is cultural
congruity

in

classroom

instruction.

This

can

be

implemented

by

constructing instruction to fit with the ethnically diverse students.

According to Geneva (2001), the significant way to established cultural
congruity in teaching is integrating ethnic and cultural diversity into highstatus school subjects for example math, science, reading and writing.
Teachers should learn how to multiculturalize these according to formal
and informal instruction.

3.0 CRITIQUES AND OPINIONS

This article is actually very useful especially for preservice teacher
like me where I need to understand and have knowledge about the cultural

diversity that exist in school. Every culture that exist in school actually
have different style or language that teacher need to know the way on
how to tackle them by concerning about their culture base. This is
because, the learning process will be more effective when students are
taught through their own culture and life experiences. I can see that the
author give brief explanation about the subject being discussed when he
provide many example of the way to prepare for culturally responsive
teaching which some of the ways I can used when teaching multicultural
students. The author also provide trustworthy information and credible
points of view where he gave two difference situation and compare both of
it.
But, there are some limitation in this article in the form of language
that he used. For me, he uses such complicated term of words and
sentences which made some readers hard to understand. In addition, this
article is based on the research finding from the variety of background
from Latino, African, Asian and Native American Students so some
example that he provided

may be differ from the real situation that

happen in Malaysia. Malaysia education are centralized where teachers

cannot simply change the learning style that already stated in the
education policies. Contradict with the decentralized education that being
implemented in certain oversea countries for example United State, the
teachers or schools have their power to change their school policies in
order to fit into the culturally responsive teaching.
In addition, I actually disagree that we cannot only focus on the
teachers teaching only in elevate school success but we need to consider
the students ethnic behaviour. That mean, in order to improve school
success, both students and teachers need to play their role. Based on
Journal of Praxis in Multicultural Education written by Elaine and Rendall
(2010), eventhough the teacher has provide good cultural congruity in
classroom instruction, some of the students have the behavioural problem
may disrupt teaching and learning process in classroom since they do not
have any interest in learning. As we can see in Malaysia, the Chinese

students are more likely to have more interest in learning as compared to

Malay students. So, the students themselves need to have awareness
about their cultural differences by trying to compare their good habit
between the culture and try to follow the good cultural habit in order to
improve their success. This can be done by the students understand and
have knowledge about the culture exist between them.
Based on the five essential elements that the author examine, I
totally agree that teachers need to develop knowledge base about the
cultural diversity of students. This basis is important since teachers may
have insight about the students cultural background and teachers will
learn to value every culture of the students and for sure racism will be
avoided. According to Villegas and Lucas (2000) in their journal preparing
culturally responsive teaching,

teacher need to discover the numerous

cultural and social group including race, sexual characteristics, ethnic,

social class and language. Teachers consciousness about knowledge of
variety type of culture may produce a favourable environment of learning
hence improving the school succeed.
Next, I also agree with the element where teachers communicate by
ethnically diverse students by giving the students opportunity to involve in
the learning process. This can be done by the students give responds and
feedback also asking question or giving opinion about what topic they are
discussing. This element can develop a well interaction between students
and teachers thus providing a conducive environment in learning process.
Lastly, I am actually agree with all the essential elements that being
examined since it provide clear explanation for preparing cultural
responsive teaching. So, I totally agreed with all the five points that the
author stated. This is because in order to prepare for culturally responsive
teaching, all the points are very important in determining the school
success.

4.0 CONCLUSION

In the nutshell, this article on preparing for culturing responsive

teaching is very favourable in helping teachers to attract attention of
multicultural students to learn and at the same time will improve the
school success. This article will be very useful for teachers especially
preservice teachers where they can make this article as a guideline for
them to teach diverse cultural students. But, for my opinion, this article
will be more useful if it also focussed on the students because students
also plays an important role to improve the school success. Even though
the teachers have prepare variety of ways to teach multicultural students,
but the students themselves do not have any awareness about the cultural
diversity, the learning process still unfavourable. So, we need the
cooperation between teachers and students in order to improve the school
success.

5.0 REFERENCES
Escalante, J., & Dirmann, J. (1990). The Jaime Escalante math program.
Journal of Negro Education, 59(3), 407-423.
Elaine, C., & Rendall, D.P., (2010). Proxis in Multicultural Education. Critical
View of
Culturally Responsive Literacy Instruction, 5(1), 83-99.
Gay, G. (2001). Culturally Responsive Teaching : Theory, Research, and
Practice. Preparing
for Culturally Responsive Teaching, 53(2), 106-116.
Montogu, A., & Watson, F., (1979). The Human Connection. New York :
McGraw-Hill.
Villegas, A.N., Lucas, T., (2000). Preparing For Culturally Responsive
Teaching. Journal of
Teacher Education, 53(1), 20-32.