Culturally responsive teaching was one of the main themes in my second annual summer study abroad program on Intercultural Perspectives on Teaching and Learning at NYU London (July 3-17, 2023).
A defining measure of culturally responsive teaching is how, and the extent to which, teachers use “the cultural characteristics, experiences, and perspectives of ethnically diverse students as conduits for teaching them more effectively. It is based on the assumption that when academic knowledge and skills are situated within the lived experiences and frames of reference of students, they are more personally meaningful, have higher interest appeal, and are learned more easily and thoroughly” (Gay, 2002, p. 106).
This has been a useful concept to the graduate learners in my program this summer. Several of these learners are themselves in-service public-school teachers (from pre-K to middle school) in New York City with expertise in the like of music education, early childhood education, special education, etc. With from five to more than 25 years of teaching experiences among them, these learners have witnessed a steady influx of immigrant students from diverse national backgrounds and cultural heritages in their increasingly multicultural classrooms (e.g., Bardolf et al., 2023). While the diversity offers exciting possibilities for enhancing intercultural awareness among the students, it also presents a multitude of challenges in language teaching (e.g., ESL), intercultural adaptation, family support or engagement, professional development of the teaching staff, and so on. Hence, one of the course’s main learning objectives has been to identify the challenges facing their counterparts in London who teach in similarly multicultural settings, as well as how the latter address these challenges or take advantage of what these challenges may present.
In this regard, we visited two elementary schools and two secondary schools in London, Mayflower Primary School and St. Andrew’s (Barnsbury) CofE Primary School, as well as Parliament Hill School (an all-girls school) and William Ellis School (an all-boys school). These four public schools are in part defined by the multicultural and multilingual backgrounds of their respective student populations, while Mayflower Primary, located in the eastern borough of Tower Hamlets in London, has the distinction of enrolling about 90% of its students from multiple generations having Bangladeshi family heritage. While our field study did not uncover any one-size-fits-all curricular design or teaching method, we did discover that storytelling has been an effective culturally responsive pedagogy in these four schools.
Identifying itself as “a storytelling school,” for example, Mayflower Primary uses storytelling as a pedagogy throughout its curriculum, beginning with nursery school. Dependent upon the grade level, and with input from multiple sources (including teachers in the schools, students and their families, members from the school’s community, etc.), a number of stories are chosen to become an integral part of every class’s teaching and learning materials. Throughout the school year, teachers and their students engage in various reading, writing, discussion, interpretation, and re/telling of these stories, some of which are culturally relevant to the heritage backgrounds of the students. According to Heba Al-Jayoosi, Mayflower Primary’s Assistant Headteacher and Inclusion and Research Leader, storytelling has been an effective tool in helping students promote their skills in reading, writing, language development, communication, and so on.
Equally important is that storytelling can also promote students’ intercultural competence (Arasaratnam, 2014) which can, in turn, help facilitate intercultural dialogue (Leeds-Hurwitz, 2014) in the long run. In a special presentation on “Storytelling and the Early Years” to my students in the summer program, Alice Jones Bartoli of King’s College London spoke about how storytelling plays an important role in helping facilitate young children’s social and emotional development. Through dialogic reading, sustained shared attention, and re/telling of stories, especially those relevant to their heritage backgrounds, students come to develop their reading and writing or literacy skills, their self-confidence or self-image, as well as their creative expression abilities. Storytelling in such a teaching and learning context also enhances students’ exposure to stories with cultural or heritage elements that are at first unfamiliar to them, as they gain opportunities to listen to, reflect upon, and comprehend or understand cultural narratives other than their own.
All the learners in the program expressed in their individual final field research reports that they plan to utilize what they learned in London this summer either in furthering their graduate studies in social work or world language education or in acting as agents of change when they return to teach in their public schools in New York City. Of course, it is quite early to tell how and to what extent their experiences and the wonderful work of our professional colleagues in London can be applied to the New York context. But I hope to report on such impact in a future update.
Casey Man Kong Lum, Associate Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue
References:
Arasaratnam, L. (2014). Intercultural competence. Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue, 3.
Bardolf, D., Edelman, S., & Worrell, G. (2023, Sep 2). Migrant families flooding into NYC schools. The New York Post.
Gay, G. (2002). Preparing for culturally responsive teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(2), 106-116.
Leeds-Hurwitz, W. (2014). Intercultural dialogue. Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue, 1.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 