ESL Teacher Drawing on Refugee Students’ Personal Experiences and Cultural Knowledge: Enacting Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 5:10 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Inclusive Education With Global Perspectives (Table 1)

Abstract

Educational scholars now recognize that what leads to the minority students’ underperformance is not the “achievement gap”, but the “opportunity gap”. To address this, education should build on students’ strengths, cultural knowledge, and familiar frames of reference. This study, based on culturally responsive pedagogy, investigates how a Caucasian teacher of a diverse ESL classroom builds on refugee students’ cultural knowledge to teach them new concepts. It is set in an elementary-level ESL classroom in the New England region. The students (ages 7-11) are refugees primarily from African countries. It is found that through modeling, positioning herself as a learner, and showing curiosity, the teacher successfully integrated students’ voices into the classroom and tapped into their cultural knowledge and lived experiences.

Author

• Susan Ataei Masjedloo, The Ohio State University