Rethinking Teacher Resistance to Culturally Relevant Education

• In Event: 61.030 - Going Rogue and Building Bridges: Teacher Learning for Justice and Equity

Abstract

Utilizing Gay’s (2013) framework, we reviewed a broad swath of the literature on two of the most common and recurrent forms of resistance to Culturally Relevant Education (CRE) that “manifest as doubts about its validity and as anxieties about anticipated difficulties with its implementation” (p.56). We found that there were three general classes of constraints that mattered most to teachers grappling with resistance to CRE: institutional/organizational factors that impinge on teacher practice; knowledge and know-how to diversify curriculum and pedagogy and build empowering learning communities; and beliefs about the validity, utility, and efficacy of CRE. We adapted this framework in a visual analytic tool, a systems space, that may be useful for developing interventions to address teacher resistance to CRE.

Authors

• Rebecca Colina Neri, University of California - Los Angeles

• Maritza Lozano, California State University - Fullerton