Challenges To Culturally Relevant Teaching
Not all educators favor culturally relevant teaching. Indeed, there are many practical challenges to implementing culturally relevant pedagogy including a lack of enforcement of culturally relevant teaching methods, and the tendency to view students as individual units only, rather than seeing them as linked inseparably with their cultural groups. In culturally relevant pedagogy, new teachers must be taught how to adapt their curriculum, methodology, teaching methods, and instructional materials to connect with students’ values and cultural norms. Therefore, another challenge for educators is to prepare reflective practitioners who can connect with diverse students and their families. Even though some schools of education acknowledge credibility in training culturally relevant educators, many wrestle with how fit such training into their program and "grudgingly add a diversity course to their curriculum." One contributor to this reluctance comes from the education professors’ discomfort with or fear of addressing issues such as racism in their courses. "The student population of America's classrooms has changed. Currently, 43% of students in our nation's schools come from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds. Latinos account for 20% of the school population and Blacks 17%. Nationally, white students now represent 57% of public school enrollment, down from 61% in the 1993-94 school year. In the largest school districts, half or more of the students are non-white. Demographic projections predict that cultural and ethnic diversity will increase. Students of color will become the majority in the United States by 2023." (James Scheurich, N/A)
Read more about this topic: Culturally Relevant Teaching
Famous quotes containing the words challenges, relevant and/or teaching:
“A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Don’t give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can’t express them. Don’t analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“Dogmatic toleration is nonsense: I would no more tolerate the teaching of Calvinism to children if I had power to persecute it than the British Raj tolerated suttee in India. Every civilized authority must draw a line between the tolerable and the intolerable.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)