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Transformative Pedagogy & Culturally Responsive Teaching
Transformative pedagogy focuses on the learner and learning and sets out to deliberately transform students’ lives. Transformative pedagogy strives to create agency in the learning relationships by encouraging learners to build their own knowledge in a supportive learning environment, to work with others in lateral knowledge-making relationships (peers, parents, and community members), to negotiate local and global differences, and to extend the breadth and scope of their education beyond the walls of the traditional classroom. Furthermore, transformative pedagogy plays an active role in changing social conditions. With this goal of changing the social condition in mind, I began to focus on an important principle we have been integrating into our pedagogy at the institution at which I currently work.
Culturally responsive teaching focuses on integrating students cultural experiences into their learning. It also emphasized increasing the equity and utility value of assessment students are asked to complete in order to increase motivation and allow students to be more culturally reflexive. Finally, culturally responsive teaching also works to focus on institutional barriers in the higher education structure that serve as barriers to marginalized students.
In order to create a culturally responsive teaching classroom instructors should get to know their students and their cultures, create an inclusive curriculum relying on writings from multiple cultural perspectives, account for language differences, communicate consistent high expectations, address your own biases, and provide opportunities for flexibility for students. Aspects of culturally responsive teaching allows for educators to be transformative in helping student change their condition in life and push their horizons further by helping them better relate their learning to their lived experiences.
American University. (2019, December 5). Culturally Responsive Teaching: Strategies and Tips | American University. Soeonline.american.edu. https://soeonline.american.edu/blog/culturally-responsive-teaching/
Burnham, K. (2020, July 31). Culturally Responsive Teaching: 5 Strategies for Educators. Northeastern University Graduate Programs; Northeastern University. https://www.northeastern.edu/graduate/blog/culturally-responsive-teaching-strategies/
Enhancing pedagogical capacity and applying active teaching methods does not mean completely rejecting traditional teaching methods, nor does it necessarily mean absolutizing active teaching methods, but requiring a harmonious combination. , the application of inheritance and absorption of the human quintessence of modern educational science. This is an important task of national defense and security education, contributing to improving the quality of training according to new requirements.
I wholeheartedly agree with your comment and also believe to the importance of CRT. Only one thing caught my eye - we can't really create agency, because it is the essence of free will, students (we all) are born with it. The definitions of learner agency tend to emphasize more of the subjectivity of learning than the experience of being taught - clearly discussing learning and teaching being two different processes (that sometimes happen in the same physical or virtual space). To better
describe the interplay of agency and structure in education, Evans (2007) defined
bounded agency as “socially situated agency, influenced but not determined by
environments and emphasizing internalized frames of reference as well as external
actions” (p. 93).
APA discussed this as student-centered learning and I am still a little unsure how different the transformative pedagogy really is, considering that learner-centered is defined as the following (almost 35 years ago!!!):
This definition of learner-centered is based on an understanding of the Learner-Centered Psychological Principles as a representation of the current knowledge base on learners and learning.
The Principles apply to all learners, in and outside of school, young and old.
Learner-centered is also related to the beliefs, characteristics, dispositions, and practices of teachers – practices primarily created by the teacher.
When teachers and their practices function from an understanding of the knowledge base delineated in the Principles, they
(a) include learners in decisions about how and what they learn and how that learning is assessed
(b) value each learner’s unique perspectives
(c) respect and accommodate individual differences in learners’ backgrounds, interests, abilities, and experiences, and
(d) treat learners as co-creators and partners in the teaching and learning process.
(APA )
:)
Nina
American Psychological Association. (1997). Learner-centered psychological principles: A framework for school reform & redesign. Washington,
DC: Author. Retrieved from https://www.ap.org/ed/governance/bea/
learning-centered.pdf
Evans, K. (2007). Concepts of bounded agency in education, work, and the personal lives of
young adults. International journal of psychology, 42(2), 85-93.