Sample Discussion Question and Answer
As I read this week’s article by Garcia Coll et al., I thought about how the integrative model of child development supports and drives the need for culturally relevant pedagogy. Garcia Coll et al. highlight school as one of the three major environments that can both promote and inhibit the development of children of color and divide it further into three nested environments:
The school district/system, individual schools, and individual classrooms. As Garcia Coll et al. pointed out, multicultural education cannot only exist within the classroom, but has to include analyses of school policies, the role of administrators, etc. While I absolutely agree that multicultural education is multi-faceted and has to be taken on with an interdisciplinary approach, I also believe that the happenings within a classroom have the most direct impact on children.
Culturally relevant pedagogy is an important tool to create an inclusive and nurturing environment for children of color because it not only provides a space for students to relate to their own culture when learning, it also requires teachers to address their own conditionings and ideologies. My question is, in a multicultural urban classroom, how do we as educators be cognizant of and responsive to every student’s broader racial, ethnic, cultural background and also pay attention to intragroup variability?
