Culturally Relevant Teaching

Culturally Relevant Teaching is a pedagogy that recognizes the diverse cultural characteristics of students from different ethnic backgrounds and adjusts teaching methods to account for this diversity Culturally relevant teachers display cultural competence: skill at teaching in a cross-cultural or multicultural setting. They enable each student to relate course content to his or her cultural context.

The term "culturally relevant teaching" is often used interchangeably with "culturally responsive teaching". This practice is also referred to as "culturally relevant pedagogy".

While the term culturally relevant teaching often deals specifically with instruction of African American students, it has been proven to be an effective form of pedagogy for students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. For instance, there is extensive research on culturally relevant teaching among Indigenous American youth. However the majority of this practice is undertaken in a primary or secondary school setting, Jabbar and Hardaker (2012) argue that there is room for discussion and implementation within a higher education environment.