An Ecological Framework for Enacting Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy

• In Event: Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Educational Justice in a Changing World

Abstract

Culturally sustaining pedagogy is a powerful construct, an emboldened expansion on the construct of culturally relevant pedagogy as it privileges the sustaining of traditions. There are many traditions in diverse communities that have sustained people through unbelievable challenges – historical and personal – about which especially young people today need socialization. Literature can serve a powerful role in helping young readers wrestle with dilemmas, many of which are informed by their negative positioning with regard to many statuses (e.g. race/ethnicity, immigrant status, gender, sexual orientation, poverty, etc.). However socialization as readers to wrestle with deep thinking and dispositions to wrestle with complexity and uncertainty in interrogating rich literary texts is no small matter. It entails organizing instruction in ways that support novices in feeling competent, efficacious, and connected to the culture of classrooms, to their peers and their teachers. These fundamental needs are rooted in our biology as humans, but the processes and circumstances under which they manifest themselves and are satisfied vary greatly and are influenced a myriad of circumstances: personal histories, personality, identities along multiple dimensions; teachers’ competencies and perceptions of themselves and their students; the culture of schooling in providing constraints or opportunities for learners (both students and teachers); and the broader community surrounding sites of learning (e.g. families, peer social networks, macro level belief systems and policies). And so I argue for the need for an ecological perspective on what is entailed in enacting culturally sustaining pedagogy.

Author

• Carol D. Lee, Northwestern University