Thirty-First International Conference on Learning

Abstract

The principles of culturally relevant pedagogy, suggests, in order to promote a more nurturing learning experience, educators must ensure they offer opportunities for students to connect their cultural backgrounds to the content. As a racial minority educator, one of the greatest outcomes of becoming an educator has been experiencing a sense of empowerment when I teach and assess my students through culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy. Growing up in Canada as a young Iranian girl, I often struggled to identify myself in the curriculum, an educational experience that I often refer to as an education without mirrors, and that impact even extended into my life as a graduate student. Today, as an educator, I have made it a priority to provide my students with opportunities to tap into their diverse cultural backgrounds and use their lived experiences as a bridge to make sense of the content they are learning. Despite the prevalence of online learning in higher education, there is limited literature about what constitutes effective culturally relevant and responsive online teaching. While online education has revolutionized learning by increasing educational access and opportunities to students, it has also led to an increase in classroom diversity, leaving instructors to struggle with how to create and foster a culturally relevant and responsive learning environment. As an online educator who teaches graduate-level education courses, I reflect on my practices that focus on diversity, equity, and social justice and discuss how online educators can engage in culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy.