Expanding the Bounds of Culturally Relevant Education

• In Event: Naming the Elephant in the Room: Considering Multiple Frameworks for Researching Religions in Education

Abstract

Purpose
This introduction provides a foundation on which the ensuing presentations build; a brief introduction to the history and tenets of culturally relevant education sets the stage for new innovations considering religious diversity and the inclusion of religion in education.

Theoretical Framework
Culturally Relevant Education (CRE) represents a wide collection of pedagogies that stand in opposition to oppression in schools and hold a commitment to collective empowerment and social justice. While there have been many contributors to CRE frameworks, we primarily focus on the foundational work of culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2010) and culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 2014). This work represents the two primary strands in CRE, teaching and pedagogy. Gay focused on teaching, what a teacher should be doing in the classroom in order to be culturally responsive. Ladson-Billings focused on pedagogy, a posture developed from the attitudes and dispositions that undergird planning, instruction, and assessment.

Modes of Inquiry and Evidence
By opening pedagogical dialogues to religious diversity, we work together as educators and researchers to develop schools that benefit all students regardless of religious or non-religious backgrounds. Such discourses promote a pluralistic and critical awareness at a time when religion is being used as political and economic justification for segregation and exclusion. Inquiry into religious diversity benefits from the groundwork laid by other pedagogies of opposition but must address the added caveat of religious belief. Research on religious diversity and its inclusion in education has to acknowledge that spiritual belief (both theistic and atheistic) often forms a core of identity, so care must be taken to interact with participants in ways that move toward equity without denying, decrying, or attacking individual belief.

Substantiated Conclusions and Scholarly Significance
There is a need to open religious dialogue within CRE discourses given how the United States is the most religiously diverse nation (Eck, 2001). As Moore (2010) asserted, there are three main reasons religion should be addressed in public education:
There is widespread religious illiteracy;
Such illiteracy fuels prejudice and antagonism, hindering efforts aimed at promoting respect and diversity; and
It is possible to increase religious literacy through education about religion through academic, non-devotional perspectives across grade levels and even into teacher preparation.
Teachers often lack knowledge about student religious beliefs, and may even hold stereotypical views about their own and others’ practices. A CRE approach to religious instruction serves to overcome such stereotypes and lack of knowledge.

Author

• Judson Crandall Laughter, The University of Tennessee - Knoxville