Preparing for Culturally Responsive Teaching

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Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 53, No. 2, March/April 2002Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 53, No. 2, March/April 2002

2001 AACTE OUTSTANDING WRITING AWARD RECIPIENT

Editor’s Note: This article draws from Geneva Gay’s recent book, Culturally ResponsiveTeaching: Theory, Research, and Practice, which received the 2001 Outstanding WritingAward from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

PREPARING FOR CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE TEACHING

Geneva GayUniversity of Washington, Seattle

In this article, a case is made for improving theschool success of ethnically diverse studentsthrough culturally responsive teaching and forpreparing teachers in preservice education pro-grams with the knowledge, attitudes, and skillsneeded to do this. The ideas presented here arebrief sketches of more thorough explanationsincluded in my recent book, Culturally Respon-sive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice (2000).The specific components of this approach toteaching are based on research findings, theo-retical claims, practical experiences, and per-sonal stories of educators researching and work-ing with underachieving African, Asian, Latino,and Native American students. These data wereproduced by individuals from a wide variety ofdisciplinary backgrounds including anthropol-ogy, sociology, psychology, sociolinguistics, com-munications, multicultural education, K-collegeclassroom teaching, and teacher education. Fiveessential elements of culturally responsive teach-ing are examined: developing a knowledge baseabout cultural diversity, including ethnic andcultural diversity content in the curriculum, dem-onstrating caring and building learning com-munities, communicating with ethnically diversestudents, and responding to ethnic diversity inthe delivery of instruction. Culturally responsiveteaching is defined as using the cultural charac-teristics, experiences, and perspectives of ethni-cally diverse students as conduits for teaching

them more effectively. It is based on the assump-tion that when academic knowledge and skillsare situated within the lived experiences andframes of reference of students, they are morepersonally meaningful, have higher interest ap-peal, and are learned more easily and thoroughly(Gay, 2000). As a result, the academic achieve-ment of ethnically diverse students will improvewhen they are taught through their own cul-tural and experiential filters (Au & Kawakami,1994; Foster, 1995; Gay, 2000; Hollins, 1996;Kleinfeld, 1975; Ladson-Billings, 1994, 1995).

DEVELOPING A CULTURALDIVERSITY KNOWLEDGE BASE

Educators generally agree that effective teach-ing requires mastery of content knowledge andpedagogical skills. As Howard (1999) so aptlystated, “We can’t teach what we don’t know.”This statement applies to knowledge both ofstudent populations and subject matter. Yet, toomany teachers are inadequately prepared to teachethnically diverse students. Some professionalprograms still equivocate about including multi-cultural education despite the growing num-bers of and disproportionately poor performanceof students of color. Other programs are tryingto decide what is the most appropriate place and“face” for it. A few are embracing multiculturaleducation enthusiastically. The equivocation is

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Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 53, No. 2, March/April 2002 106-116© 2002 by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education



inconsistent with preparing for culturally respon-sive teaching, which argues that explicit knowl-edge about cultural diversity is imperative tomeetingtheeducationalneedsofethnicallydiversestudents.

Part of this knowledge includes understand-ing the cultural characteristics and contribu-tions of different ethnic groups (Hollins, King, &Hayman, 1994; King, Hollins, & Hayman, 1997;Pai, 1990; Smith, 1998). Culture encompassesmany things, some of which are more importantfor teachers to know than others because theyhave direct implications for teaching and learn-ing. Among these are ethnic groups’ culturalvalues, traditions, communication, learning styles,contributions, and relational patterns. For exam-ple, teachers need to know (a) which ethnicgroups give priority to communal living andcooperative problem solving and how these pref-erences affect educational motivation, aspira-tion, and task performance; (b) how differentethnic groups’ protocols of appropriate waysfor children to interact with adults are exhibitedin instructional settings; and (c) the implicationsof gender role socialization in different ethnicgroups for implementing equity initiatives inclassroom instruction. This information consti-tutes the first essential component of the knowl-edge base of culturally responsive teaching. Someof the cultural characteristics and contributionsof ethnic groups that teachers need to know areexplained in greater detail by Gold, Grant, andRivlin (1977); Shade (1989); Takaki (1993); Banksand Banks (1995); and Spring (1995).

The knowledge that teachers need to haveabout cultural diversity goes beyond mere aware-ness of, respect for, and general recognition ofthe fact that ethnic groups have different valuesor express similar values in various ways. Thus,the second requirement for developing a knowl-edge base for culturally responsive teaching isacquiring detailed factual information about thecultural particularities of specific ethnic groups(e.g., African, Asian, Latino, and Native Ameri-can). This is needed to make schooling moreinteresting and stimulating for, representativeof, and responsive to ethnically diverse students.Too many teachers and teacher educators thinkthat their subjects (particularly math and sci-

ence) and cultural diversity are incompatible, orthat combining them is too much of a concep-tual and substantive stretch for their subjects tomaintain disciplinary integrity. This is simplynot true. There is a place for cultural diversity inevery subject taught in schools. Furthermore,culturally responsive teaching deals as muchwith using multicultural instructional strate-gies as with adding multicultural content to thecurriculum. Misconceptions like these stem, inpart, from the fact that many teachers do notknow enough about the contributions that dif-ferent ethnic groups have made to their subjectareas and are unfamiliar with multicultural edu-cation. They may be familiar with the achieve-ments of select, high-profile individuals fromsome ethnic groups in some areas, such as Afri-can American musicians in popular culture orpoliticians in city, state, and national govern-ment. Teachers may know little or nothing aboutthe contributions of Native Americans and AsianAmericans in the same arenas. Nor do theyknow enough about the less publicly visible butvery significant contributions of ethnic groupsin science, technology, medicine, math, theol-ogy, ecology, peace, law, and economics.

Many teachers also are hard-pressed to havean informed conversation about leading multi-cultural education scholars and their major pre-mises, principles, and proposals. What they thinkthey know about the field is often based onsuperficial or distorted information conveyedthrough popular culture, mass media, and crit-ics. Or their knowledge reflects cursory aca-demic introductions that provide insufficientdepth of analysis of multicultural education.These inadequacies can be corrected by teach-ers’ acquiring more knowledge about the con-tributions of different ethnic groups to a widevariety of disciplines and a deeper understand-ing of multicultural education theory, research,and scholarship. This is a third important pillarof the knowledge foundation of culturally respon-sive teaching. Acquiring this knowledge is notas difficult as it might at first appear. Ethnicindividuals and groups have been making wor-thy contributions to the full range of life and cul-ture in the United States and humankind fromthe very beginning. And there is no shortage of

Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 53, No. 2, March/April 2002 107



quality information available about multicul-tural education. It just has to be located, learned,and woven into the preparation programs ofteachers and classroom instruction. This can beaccomplished, in part, by all prospective teach-ers taking courses on the contributions of ethnicgroups to the content areas that they will teachand on multicultural education.

DESIGNING CULTURALLYRELEVANT CURRICULA

In addition to acquiring a knowledge baseabout ethnic and cultural diversity, teachers needto learn how to convert it into culturally respon-sive curriculum designs and instructional strat-egies. Three kinds of curricula are routinelypresent in the classroom, each of which offersdifferent opportunities for teaching culturaldiversity. The first is formal plans for instructionapproved by the policy and governing bodies ofeducational systems. They are usually anchoredin and complemented by adopted textbooksand other curriculum guidelines such as the“standards” issued by national commissions,state departments of education, professional asso-ciations, and local school districts. Even thoughthese curriculum documents have improved overtime in their treatment of ethnic and culturaldiversity, they are still not as good as they needto be (Wade, 1993). Culturally responsive teach-ers know how to determine the multiculturalstrengths and weaknesses of curriculum designsand instructional materials and make the changesnecessary to improve their overall quality. Theseanalyses should focus on the quantity, accuracy,complexity, placement, purpose, variety, signif-icance, and authenticity of the narrative texts,visual illustrations, learning activities, role mod-els, and authorial sources used in the instruc-tional materials. There are several recurrent trendsin how formal school curricula deal with ethnicdiversity that culturally responsive teachers needto correct. Among them are avoiding controver-sial issues such as racism, historical atrocities,powerlessness, and hegemony; focusing on theaccomplishments of the same few high-profileindividuals repeatedly and ignoring the actionsof groups; giving proportionally more attentionto African Americans than other groups of color;

decontextualizing women, their issues, and theiractions from their race and ethnicity; ignoringpoverty; and emphasizing factual informationwhile minimizing other kinds of knowledge (suchas values, attitudes, feelings, experiences, andethics). Culturally responsive teaching reversesthese trends by dealing directly with contro-versy; studying a wide range of ethnic individu-als and groups; contextualizing issues withinrace, class, ethnicity, and gender; and includingmultiple kinds of knowledge and perspectives.It also recognizes that these broad-based analy-ses are necessary to do instructional justice tothe complexity, vitality, and potentiality of eth-nic and cultural diversity. One specific way tobegin this curriculum transformation process isto teach preservice (and inservice) teachers howto do deep cultural analyses of textbooks andother instructional materials, revise them forbetter representations of culturally diversity, andprovide many opportunities to practice theseskills under guided supervision. Teachers needto thoroughly understand existing obstacles toculturally responsive teaching before they cansuccessfully remove them.

Other instructional plans used frequently inschools are called the symbolic curriculum (Gay,1995). They include images, symbols, icons, mot-toes, awards, celebrations, and other artifactsthat are used to teach students knowledge, skills,morals, and values. The most common forms ofsymbolic curricula are bulletin board decora-tions; images of heroes and heroines; trade books;and publicly displayed statements of social eti-quette, rules and regulations, ethical principles,and tokens of achievement. Therefore, class-room and school walls are valuable “advertis-ing” space, and students learn important les-sons from what is displayed there. Over time,they come to expect certain images, value whatis present, and devalue that which is absent.Culturally responsive teachers are critically con-scious of the power of the symbolic curriculumas an instrument of teaching and use it to helpconvey important information, values, and actionsabout ethnic and cultural diversity. They ensurethat the images displayed in classrooms repre-sent a wide variety of age, gender, time, place,social class, and positional diversity within and

108 Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 53, No. 2, March/April 2002



across ethnic groups and that they are accurateextensions of what is taught through the formalcurriculum. For example, lessons of leadership,power, and authority taught through imagesshould include males and females and expres-sive indicators of these accomplishments frommany different ethnic groups.

A third type of curriculum that is fundamen-tal to culturally responsive teaching is whatCortés (1991, 1995, 2000) has called the societalcurriculum. This is the knowledge, ideas, andimpressions about ethnic groups that are por-trayed in the mass media. Television programs,newspapers, magazines, and movies are muchmore than mere factual information or idle enter-tainment. They engage in ideological manage-ment (Spring, 1992) and construct knowledge(Cortés, 1995) because their content reflects andconveys particular cultural, social, ethnic, andpolitical values, knowledge, and advocacies. Formany students, mass media is the only source ofknowledge about ethnic diversity; for others,what is seen on television is more influentialand memorable than what is learned from booksinclassrooms.Unfortunately,muchof this“knowl-edge” is inaccurate and frequently prejudicial.In a study of ethnic stereotyping in news report-ing, Campbell (1995) found that these programsperpetuate “myths about life outside of white‘mainstream’ America . . . [that] contribute to anunderstanding of minority cultures as less sig-nificant, as marginal” (p. 132). Members of bothminority and majority groups are negativelyaffected by these images and representations.Ethnic distortions in mass media are not limitedto news programs; they are pervasive in othertypes of programming as well. The messagesthey transmit are too influential for teachers toignore. Therefore, culturally responsive teach-ing includes thorough and critical analyses ofhow ethnic groups and experiences are pre-sented in mass media and popular culture.Teachers need to understand how media imagesof African, Asian, Latino, Native, and EuropeanAmericans are manipulated; the effects they haveon different ethnic groups; what formal schoolcurricula and instruction can do to counteracttheir influences; and how to teach students to bediscerning consumers of and resisters to ethnic

information disseminated through the societalcurriculum.

DEMONSTRATING CULTURAL CARINGAND BUILDING A LEARNING COMMUNITY

A third critical component of preparation forculturally responsive teaching is creating class-room climates that are conducive to learning forethnically diverse students. Pedagogical actionsare as important as (if not more important than)multicultural curriculum designs in implement-ing culturally responsive teaching. They are notsimply technical processes of applying any “bestpractices” to underachieving students of color,however. Much more is required. Teachers needto know how to use cultural scaffolding in teach-ing these students—that is, using their own cul-tures and experiences to expand their intellec-tual horizons and academic achievement. Thisbegins by demonstrating culturally sensitive car-ing and building culturally responsive learningcommunities. Teachers have to care so muchabout ethnically diverse students and theirachievement that they accept nothing less thanhigh-level success from them and work dili-gently to accomplish it (Foster, 1997; Kleinfeld,1974, 1975). This is a very different conception ofcaring than the often-cited notion of “gentlenurturing and altruistic concern,” which canlead to benign neglect under the guise of lettingstudents of color make their own way and moveat their own pace.

Culturally responsive caring also places “teach-ers in an ethical, emotional, and academic part-nership with ethnically diverse students, a part-nership that is anchored in respect, honor, integ-rity, resource sharing, and a deep belief in thepossibility of transcendence” (Gay, 2000, p. 52).Caring is a moral imperative, a social responsi-bility, and a pedagogical necessity. It requiresthat teachers use “knowledge and strategic think-ing to decide how to act in the best interests ofothers . . . [and] binds individuals to their soci-ety, to their communities, and to each other”(Webb, Wilson, Corbett, & Mordecai, 1993, pp. 33-34). In culturally responsive teaching, the “knowl-edge” of interest is information about ethnicallydiverse groups; the “strategic thinking” is howthis cultural knowledge is used to redesign teach-




ing and learning; and the “bounds” are the reci-procity involved in students working with eachother and with teachers as partners to improvetheir achievement. Thus, teachers need to under-stand that culturally responsive caring is actionoriented in that it demonstrates high expecta-tions and uses imaginative strategies to ensureacademic success for ethnically diverse students.Teachers genuinely believe in the intellectualpotential of these students and accept, unequiv-ocally, their responsibility to facilitate its real-ization without ignoring, demeaning, or neglect-ing their ethnic and cultural identities. Theybuild toward academic success from a basis ofcultural validation and strength.

Building community among diverse learnersis another essential element of culturally respon-sive teaching. Many students of color grow upin cultural environments where the welfare ofthe group takes precedence over the individualand where individuals are taught to pool theirresources to solve problems. It is not that indi-viduals and their needs are neglected; they areaddressed within the context of group function-ing. When the group succeeds or falters, so doits individual members. As a result, the groupfunctions somewhat like a “mutual aid society”in which all members are responsible for help-ing each other perform and ensuring that every-one contributes to the collective task. The posi-tive benefits of communities of learners andcooperative efforts on student achievement havebeen validated by Escalanté and Dirmann (1990)in high school mathematics for Latinos; by Sheets(1995) in high school Spanish language and lit-erature with low-achieving Latinos; by Fulliloveand Treisman (1990) in 1st-year college calculuswith African, Latino, and Chinese Americans;and by Tharp and Gallimore (1988) in elemen-tary reading and language arts with NativeHawaiian children. These ethics and styles ofworking are quite different from the typicalones used in schools, which give priority to theindividual and working independently. Cul-turally responsive teachers understand how con-flicts between different work styles may inter-fere with academic efforts and outcomes, andthey understand how to design more commu-nal learning environments.

The process of building culturally responsivecommunities of learning is important for teach-ers to know as well. The emphasis should be onholistic or integrated learning. Contrary to thetendency in conventional teaching to make dif-ferent types of learning (cognitive, physical, emo-tional) discrete, culturally responsive teachingdeals with them in concert. Personal, moral,social, political, cultural, and academic knowl-edge and skills are taught simultaneously. Forexample, students are taught their cultural heri-tages and positive ethnic identity developmentalong with math, science, reading, critical think-ing, and social activism. They also are taughtabout the heritages, cultures, and contributionsof other ethnic groups as they are learning theirown. Culturally responsive teachers help stu-dents to understand that knowledge has moraland political elements and consequences, whichobligate them to take social action to promotefreedom, equality, and justice for everyone. Thepositive effects of teaching these knowledgesand skills simultaneously for African, Asian,Latino, and Native American students are docu-mented by Ladson-Billings (1994); Foster (1995);Krater, Zeni, & Cason, (1994); Tharp & Gallimore(1988); Escalanté and Dirmann (1990); and Sheets(1995).

CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATIONSEffective cross-cultural communication is a

fourth pivotal element of preparing for cultur-ally responsive teaching. Porter and Samovar(1991) explained that culture influences “whatwe talk about; how we talk about it; what wesee, attend to, or ignore; how we think; and whatwe think about” (p. 21). Montagu and Watson(1979) added that communication is the “groundof meeting and the foundation of community”(p. vii) among human beings. Without this “meet-ing” and “community” in the classroom, learn-ing is difficult to accomplish for some students.In fact, determining what ethnically diverse stu-dents know and can do, as well as what they arecapable of knowing and doing, is often a func-tion of how well teachers can communicate withthem. The intellectual thought of students fromdifferent ethnic groups is culturally encoded(Cazden, John, & Hymes, 1985) in that its expres-




sive forms and substance are strongly influ-enced by cultural socialization. Teachers need tobe able to decipher these codes to teach ethni-cally diverse students more effectively.

As is the case with any cultural component,characteristics of ethnic communication stylesare core traits of group trends, not descriptionsof the behaviors of individual members of thegroup. Whether and how particular individualsmanifest these characteristics vary along con-tinua of depth, clarity, frequency, purity, pur-pose, and place. However, expressive variabil-ity of cultural characteristics among ethnic groupmembers does not nullify their existence. It isimperative for teachers to understand these reali-ties because many of them are hesitant aboutdealing with cultural descriptors for fear of ste-reotyping and overgeneralizing. They compen-sate for this danger by trying to ignore or denythe existence of cultural influences on students’behaviors and their own. The answer is notdenial or evasion but direct confrontation andthorough, critical knowledge of the interactiverelationships between culture, ethnicity, com-munication, and learning and between individ-uals and groups.

Culturally responsive teacher preparation pro-grams teach how the communication styles ofdifferent ethnic groups reflect cultural valuesand shape learning behaviors and how to mod-ify classroom interactions to better accommo-date them. They include knowledge about thelinguistic structures of various ethnic communi-cation styles as well as contextual factors, cul-tural nuances, discourse features, logic andrhythm, delivery, vocabulary usage, role rela-tionships of speakers and listeners, intonation,gestures, and body movements. Research reportedby Cazden et al. (1985), Kochman (1981), andSmitherman (1994) indicated that the discoursefeatures of cultural communications are morechallenging and problematic in teaching ethni-cally different students than structural linguisticelements. The cultural markers and nuancesembedded in the communicative behaviors ofhighly ethnically affiliated Latino, Native,Asian, and African Americans are difficult torecognize, understand, accept, and respond to

without corresponding cultural knowledge ofthese ethnic groups.

There are several other more specific compo-nents of the communication styles of ethnic groupsthat should be part of the preparation for andpractice of culturally responsive teaching. Oneof these is the protocols of participation in dis-course. Whereas in mainstream schooling andculture a passive-receptive style of communica-tion and participation predominates, many groupsof color use an active-participatory one. In thefirst, communication is didactic, with the speakerplaying the active role and the listener beingpassive. Students are expected to listen quietlywhile teachers talk and to talk only at prescribedtimes when granted permission by the teacher.Their participation is usually solicited by teach-ers’ asking convergent questions that are posedto specific individuals and require factual, “rightanswer” responses. This pattern is serialized inthat it is repeated from one student to the next(Goodlad, 1984; Philips, 1983).

In contrast, the communicative styles of mostethnic groups of color in the United States aremore active, participatory, dialectic, and multi-modal. Speakers expect listeners to engage withthem as they speak by providing prompts, feed-back, and commentary. The roles of speaker andlistener are fluid and interchangeable. AmongAfrican Americans, this interactive communi-cative style is referred to as “call-response” (Baber,1987; Smitherman, 1977); and for Native Hawai-ians, it is called “talk-story” (Au, 1993; Au &Kawakami, 1994). Among European Americanfemales, the somewhat similar practice of “talk-ing along with the speaker” to show involve-ment, support, and confirmation is described as“rapport talk” (Tannen, 1990). These communalcommunication styles can be problematic in theclassroom for both teachers and students. Unin-formed and unappreciative teachers considerthem rude, distractive, and inappropriate andtake actions to squelch them. Students who aretold not to use them may be, in effect, intellectu-ally silenced. Because they are denied use oftheir natural ways of talking, their thinking,intellectual engagement, and academic effortsare diminished as well.




Another communication technique importantto doing culturally responsive teaching is under-standing different ethnic groups’ patterns of taskengagement and organizing ideas. In school, stu-dents are taught to be very direct, precise, deduc-tive, and linear in communication. That is, theyshould be parsimonious in talking and writing,avoid using lots of embellishment, stay focusedon the task or stick to the point, and build a logi-cal case from the evidence to the conclusion,from the parts to the whole. When issues aredebated and information is presented, studentsare expected to be objective, dispassionate, andexplicit in reporting carefully sequential facts.The quality of the discourse is determined bythe clarity of the descriptive information pro-vided; the absence of unnecessary verbiage, flair,or drama; and how easily the listener (or reader)can discern the logic and relationship of theideas (Kochman, 1981). Researchers and schol-ars call this communicative style topic-centered(Au, 1993; Michaels 1981, 1984). Many African,Asian, Latino, and Native Americans use a dif-ferent approach to organizing and transmittingideas: one called topic-chaining communication.It is highly contextual, and much time is devotedto setting a social stage prior to the performanceof an academic task. This is accomplished by thespeakers’ (or writers’) providing a lot of back-ground information; being passionately and per-sonally involved with the content of the dis-course; using much indirectness (such as innu-endo, symbolism, and metaphor) to convey ideas;weaving many different threads or issues into asingle story; and embedding talk with feelingsof intensity, advocacy, evaluation, and aesthet-ics. There also is the tendency to make the dis-course conversational (Au, 1993; Fox, 1994;Kochman, 1981; Smitherman, 1994). The think-ing of these speakers appears to be circular, andtheir communication sounds like storytelling.To one who is unfamiliar with it, this communi-cation style “sounds rambling, disjointed, andas if the speaker never ends a thought beforegoing on to something else” (Gay, 2000, p. 96).These (and other) differences in ethnic commu-nication styles have many implications for cul-turally responsive teaching. Understanding themis necessary to avoid violating the cultural val-

ues of ethnically diverse students in instruc-tional communications; to better decipher theirintellectual abilities, needs, and competencies;and to teach them style or code-shifting skills sothat they can communicate in different wayswith different people in different settings fordifferent purposes. Therefore, multicultural com-munication competency is an important goal andcomponent of culturally responsive teaching.

CULTURAL CONGRUITY INCLASSROOM INSTRUCTION

The final aspect of preparation for culturallyresponsive teaching discussed in this article dealswith the actual delivery of instruction to ethni-cally diverse students. Culture is deeply embed-ded in any teaching; therefore, teaching ethni-cally diverse students has to be multiculturalized.A useful way to think about operationalizingthis idea in the act of teaching is matching instruc-tional techniques to the learning styles of diversestudents. Or, as the contributing authors to Edu-cation and Cultural Process (Spindler, 1987) sug-gested, establishing continuity between the modusoperandi of ethnic groups and school cultures inteaching and learning. Many possibilities forestablishing these matches, intersections, orbridges are implied in the previous discussions.For example, a topic-chaining communicationstyle is very conducive to a storytelling teachingstyle. Cooperative group learning arrangementsand peer coaching fit well with the communalcultural systems of African, Asian, Native, andLatino American groups (Gay, 2000; Spring, 1995).Autobiographical case studies and fiction cancrystallize ethnic identity and affiliation issuesacross contextual boundaries (i.e., geographic,generational, temporal). Motion and movement,music, frequent variability in tasks and formats,novelty, and dramatic elements in teachingimprove the academic performance of AfricanAmericans (Allen & Boykin, 1992; Allen & But-ler, 1996; Boykin, 1982; Guttentag & Ross, 1972;Hanley, 1998).

Cultural characteristics provide the criteriafor determining how instructional strategiesshould be modified for ethnically diverse stu-dents. Developing skills in this area should beginwith teacher education students confronting the




misconceptions and controversies surroundinglearning styles. Some might be resolved by under-standing that learning styles are how individu-als engage in the process of learning, not theirintellectual abilities. Like all cultural phenom-ena, they are complex, multidimensional, anddynamic. There is room for individuals to movearound within the characteristics of particularlearning styles, and they can be taught to crossstyle parameters. Learning styles do have corestructures, and specific patterns by ethnic groupsare discernible (see, for instance, Shade, 1989).The internal structure of ethnic learning stylesincludes at least eight key components (whichare configured differently for various groups):preferred content; ways of working through learn-ing tasks; techniques for organizing and con-veying ideas and thoughts; physical and socialsettings for task performance; structural arrange-ments of work, study, and performance space;perceptual stimulation for receiving, process-ing, and demonstrating comprehension and com-petence; motivations, incentives, and rewardsfor learning; and interpersonal interactional styles.These dimensions provide different points ofentry and emphasis for matching instruction tothe learning styles of students from various eth-nic groups. To respond most effectively to them,teachers need to know how they are configuredfor different ethnic groups as well as the patternsof variance that exist within the configurations.

Another powerful way to establish culturalcongruity in teaching is integrating ethnic andcultural diversity into the most fundamentaland high-status aspects of the instructional pro-cess on a habitual basis. An examination ofschool curricula and measures of student achieve-ment indicates that the highest stakes and high-est status school subjects or skill areas are math,science, reading, and writing. Teachers shouldlearn how to multiculturalize these especially,although all formal and informal aspects of theeducational process also should be changed.Further analysis of teaching behaviors revealsthat a high percentage of instructional time isdevoted to giving examples, scenarios, andvignettes to demonstrate how information,principles, concepts, and skills operate in prac-tice. These make up the pedagogical bridges that

connect prior knowledge with new knowledge,the known with the unknown, and abstractionswith lived realities. Teachers need to developrich repertoires of multicultural instructionalexamples to use in teaching ethnically diversestudents.

This is not something that happens automati-cally or simply because we want it to. It is alearned skill that should be taught in teacherpreparation programs. The process begins withunderstanding the role and prominence of ex-amples in the instructional process, knowingthe cultures and experiences of different ethnicgroups, harvesting teaching examples from thesecritical sources, and learning how to apply multi-cultural examples in teaching other knowledgeand skills—for instance, using illustrations ofethnic architecture, fabric designs, and recipesin teaching geometric principles, mathematicaloperations, and propositional thought. Or us-ing various samples of ethnic literature in teach-ing the concept of genre and reading skills suchas comprehension, inferential thinking, vocabu-lary building, and translation. Research indi-cates that culturally relevant examples have pos-itive effects on the academic achievement of eth-nically diverse students. Boggs, Watson-Gegeo,and McMillen (1985) and Tharp and Gallimore(1988) demonstrated these effects for Native Ha-waiians; Foster (1989), Lee (1993), and Mosesand Cobb (2001) for African Americans; García(1999) for Latinos and limited-English speakers;and Lipka and Mohatt (1998) for Native Alas-kans. Observations made by Lipka and Mohatton their research and practice with using cul-tural examples to teach math and science toYup’ik students in Alaska underscored the im-portance and benefits of these strategies for im-proving school achievement. They noted that

Important connections between an aboriginal sys-tem of numbers and measurements and the huntingand gathering context from which it derived can beused as a bridge to the decontextualized abstractsystem often used in teaching mathematics and sci-ence, . . . can demystify how mathematics and sci-ence are derived . . . [and] visualize . . . ways in whicheveryday tasks and knowledge can be a basis forlearning in formal schooling. (p. 176).

A wide variety of other techniques for incor-porating culturally diverse contributions, expe-




riences, and perspectives into classroom teachingcan be extracted from the work of these andother scholars. They are valuable models andincentives for doing culturally responsive teach-ing and should be a routine part of teacher prep-aration programs.

CONCLUSIONThe components of the preparation for and

practice of culturally responsive teaching includedin this discussion are not inclusive. There ismuch more to know, think, and do. These sug-gestions are merely samples of the knowledgeand skills needed to prepare teachers to workmore effectively with students who are not partof the U.S. ethnic, racial, and cultural main-stream. This preparation requires a more thor-ough knowledge of the specific cultures of dif-ferent ethnic groups, how they affect learningbehaviors, and how classroom interactions andinstruction can be changed to embrace these dif-ferences. Because culture strongly influences theattitudes, values, and behaviors that studentsand teachers bring to the instructional process,it has to likewise be a major determinant of howthe problems of underachievement are solved.This mandate for change is both simple and pro-found. It is simple because it demands for ethni-cally different students that which is alreadybeing done for many middle-class, EuropeanAmerican students—that is, the right to grapplewith learning challenges from the point of strengthand relevance found in their own cultural framesof reference. It is profound because, to date, U.S.education has not been very culturally respon-sive to ethnically diverse students. Instead, thesestudents have been expected to divorce them-selves from their cultures and learn according toEuropean American cultural norms. This placesthem in double jeopardy—having to master theacademic tasks while functioning under cul-tural conditions unnatural (and often unfamil-iar) to them. Removing this second burden is asignificant contribution to improving their aca-demic achievement. This can be done by allteachers’ being culturally responsive to ethni-cally diverse students throughout their instruc-tional processes. But they cannot be reasonably

held accountable for doing so if they are not ade-quately prepared. Therefore, teacher preparationprograms must be as culturally responsive toethnic diversity as K-12 classroom instruction.

REFERENCESAllen, B. A., & Boykin, A. W. (1992). African-American

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Geneva Gay is a professor of education at the Univer-sity of Washington, Seattle, where she teaches courses inmulticultural education and general curriculum theory

within the graduate studies and teacher education pro-grams. She is a former high school social studies teacher.Her research, teaching, and scholarship interests includethe interaction among culture, ethnicity, and education;curriculum design, staff development, and classroom instruc-tion for multicultural education; and bridging multicul-tural education theory and practice. She is the author ofmore than 130 articles and book chapters, the author of twobooks, and the coeditor of one. Her latest book, CulturallyResponsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice(2000, Teachers College Press), received the AACTE 2001Outstanding Writing Award.




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Preparing for Culturally Responsive Teaching