Kingsborough has a diverse student population, and our work with Achieving the Dream has revealed a number of opportunity gaps in how we educate our students. To help address these gaps, we invite you to explore Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) a student-centered approach to teaching and learning that recognizes and capitalizes on students’ diverse cultural backgrounds to motivate and promote learning.

CRT focuses on the student, but begins with the instructor. We all make assumptions and have biases that stem from our own lived experiences. CRT asks instructors to self-reflect to become aware of their assumptions and biases and consider how these impact our teaching. Lastly, CRT asks us to invite students to bring their own lived experiences to inform our work so that students are at the center of learning.

CRT at KCC

For the last few years, KCTL has offered opportunities for faculty to explore CRT through a number of Winter Workshops (with Yolanda Sealy-Ruiz, Margery Ginsberg, Jeanine Williams, and Bryan Dewsbury) and through a  CRT Faculty Interest Group that read articles and chapters by writers such as hooks, Ladson-Billings, Simmons, Milner, as well as the text Diversity and Motivation by Ginsberg and Wlodkowsky. That book introduced us to Wlodkowski and Ginsberg’s (1995) Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching, on which this seminar, which was piloted in Spring 2019, was based. This semester, in light of our abrupt move to distance learning, we consider how CRT can be integrated, in particular, in the online environment. We will consider four aspects of instruction–class management, materials, activities, and grading and assessment–through the lens of Wlodkowski and Ginsberg’s framework in order to identify concrete ways to put CRT into action online. This seminar will be moderated by Janine Graziano (English, KCTL). 

The Framework

Please read about Wlodkowski and Ginsberg’s Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching. A snapshot of it, from the article, appears below:

Establishing inclusion–creating a learning atmosphere in which students and teachers feel respected and connected to one another

Developing attitude–creating a favorable disposition toward the learning experience through personal relevance and choice

Enhancing meaning–creating challenging and thoughtful learning experiences that include student perspectives and values

Engendering competence–creating an understanding that students are effective in learning something they value

Content of the Seminar

We have divided this seminar into four modules that correspond to the four aspects of instruction noted earlier: class management, materials, activities, and grading and assessment. Each module contains three case studies and each case is followed by questions for discussion that involve considering the case in light of the Motivational Framework (a snapshot of which is repeated on each case page, for easy reference). Each case is deliberately vague about the identity (in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, etc.) of the professor and, for the most part, of the students as well. However, we invite you to reflect on how you picture the actors in each case, and whether your responses to the questions would differ if you imagined the actors differently. This kind of reflection is the beginning of the work needed to really teach in a culturally responsive way.

Structure of the Seminar

Thank you for joining us! This seminar is designed to be self-paced. You can work with the modules in the order displayed in the menu to the left, or in any order that meets your needs. For each module, we ask you to consider three cases, which can be found on the dropdown menu to the left under each module name. Cases are followed by a question or two, and we ask you to respond to these in the comment box below each. You can also find links to subsequent cases for that module right below the questions. Each module also has a final, summative question. 

Note: As a participant, you will need to check the box at the bottom of the page to turn on email notifications so you will be alerted when others respond as well, and we encourage you to stay engaged so a discussion can emerge.

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Course Modules

Module 1: Class Management

Module 2: Materials

Module 3: Activities 

Module 4: Grading and Assessment

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