AJE Feature | Collaboratively developing culturally-grounded curriculum to foster social justice by Joseph Levitan and Kayla M. Johnson
Full-length article “Salir Adelante: Collaboratively Developing Culturally Grounded Curriculum with Marginalized Communities” by Levitan and Johnson published by the American Journal of Education available here.
The Need for Culturally-Grounded Curriculum
Asset-based, identity- and culturally-reflective education practices, such as curricula that build from students’ identities and cultural backgrounds, increases students’ engagement (Ladson-Billings 1992), improves their success (Howard and Terry 2011), and fosters their well-being (Castagno and Brayboy 2008). However, marginalized students around the world often do not have access to quality education that is grounded in their identities and cultures. There are multiple reasons for this—but one important reason is the epistemological gap (i.e., the orientation towards what knowledge is and what knowledge is most important) between curriculum designers and the students who the curriculum designers are (in principle) meant to serve.
When teachers, school boards, and departments of education engage in the typical top-down curriculum development approach, this epistemological gap means that the curriculum they develop is likely not well-aligned with the cultural backgrounds and epistemological orientations of the students. While much groundbreaking research has been done with culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining pedagogies in specific contexts, in practice, the epistemological gap persists. Work to close this gap raises a number of questions about how to build asset-based curriculum that is grounded in students’ identities and cultures. Generating evidence-driven principles and processes for creating culturally-grounded curricula is, therefore, necessary to provide high quality and socially just education for all students.
Our study in the February 2020 volume of AJE, “Salir Adelante: Collaboratively developing culturally-grounded curriculum with marginalized communities” illustrates our process of building culturally-grounded curriculum. We believe our work can contribute to improving existing approaches to generate more socially just education opportunities with marginalized youth. We see our work as especially relevant for educators and curriculum designers who do not share the same cultural and epistemological backgrounds as their students.
The lack of culturally-grounded curriculum in schools is apparent to many students and teachers. In our case, we each began grappling with the concept and importance of culturally-grounded curriculum through our experiences as students and educators. While teaching in a charter school in Baltimore City, Joe noticed that his predominantly Black, low-income students were not engaged with the school’s White-centric ELA curriculum. Similarly, growing up in Appalachia, Kayla rarely saw herself in the stories that she and her classmates would read in class. While these separate but similar experiences clearly point to the need for curriculum that is more reflective of local cultures and histories, the need became most apparent for us when we started working with students from Quechua-speaking (Indigenous) communities in the Peruvian Andes. We found that, while we were well-situated to facilitate educational opportunities, the students, parents, and community leaders were best suited to decide how and what they wanted to learn. This led us to undertake a reflexive inquiry-based project with students and parents to better understand how to make curricula more grounded in their cultures’, identities, and epistemologies.
Bridging Bodies of Literature: Culturally-Relevant Education, Student Voice, and Action Research
Many seminal scholars have advanced the importance of asset-based education that responds to students’ identities. In our article, we acknowledge and are grateful to the creators of the significant body of scholarship on culturally relevant teaching, culturally responsive curriculum, and culturally sustaining pedagogy. Educators such as Gloria Ladson-Billings, Geneva Gay, Bryan Brayboy, James Banks, Nunia Qanatsiaq Anoee, and Django Paris (and others cited in our article) have and continue to push for education that not only doesn’t ignore or belittle marginalized students’ identities and cultures, but actively engages with their identities and cultures as a strength and builds from a foundation of meaningful, positive knowledge. We also learned from and are thankful for scholars in the student voice field and the collaborative action-research field (also cited in our article). We think that these three fields of study intersect in important ways, and we connect these disciplines in our study in order to foster more socially just education initiatives.
We also contribute to these sets of scholarship in ways that are cognizant of our identities and positionalities, which (generally) are of caring outsider-insiders concerned about issues of social justice in education. This work builds from Joe’s previous scholarship (Levitan 2018), which explores how an educator’s theoretical underpinnings can influence how they interpret students’ voices and the decisions that they make when working with students. He discusses how to reflect through a multi-theory lens to become more aware of, and to mitigate, interpretive biases. Joe argues, as do others, that critical awareness and mitigation of biases is important for any educator, but particularly for educators from outsider positionalities. In his article, Joe shows how conversations with Indigenous young women, analyzed through four different and commonly-used theoretical frameworks (feminist, critical, development, and postcolonial), can lead to four vastly different interpretations of students’ voices, and to vastly different educational decisions. Most often, educators use only one framework to interpret community voices, which ultimately may not reflect what the students or parents mean. Therefore, Joe argues, and we collectively believe, that considering multiple theoretical perspectives is essential for understanding students’ voices and for fostering social justice in educational organization.
In this latest article, we build from Joe’s previous work and deal with the process-oriented and practical aspects of developing culturally-grounded curriculum with marginalized communities through collaborative student and community voice action research. We expand Joe’s previously mentioned case in Peru to examine questions like: How do educators actually do collaborative culturally-grounded curriculum development? And in particular, how do educators who are often from backgrounds that are dissimilar from their students’ productively engage in this work? We use two theoretical frameworks this time—human capital theory and decolonial theory—to illustrate and underscore the importance of multi-theory interpretation of the voices of marginalized community members. We then present our research process as an example of what developing culturally-grounded curriculum could look like. We reflect on this project, the literature, and our own values about socially just education to better understand how this work might be effectively performed in other contexts.
The Principles of Collaboratively Developing Culturally-Grounded Curriculum
Ultimately, our article advances five principles of engaging in the collaborative process of developing culturally-grounded curriculum with marginalized communities:
- Curriculum development is an iterative process. If culture is dynamic and not static (which is how we view it), then a curriculum that is grounded in students’ culture must also be dynamic. For this reason, we see curriculum development as an iterative process—one that must be engaged in over and over and that is flexible in response to changing conceptions of culture, changing goals, and changing needs.
- Curricula and objectives are built with the
community. Historically (and currently), educators burden marginalized
communities with paternalistic and patronizing top-down curricular decision-making
processes that lead (often—but not exclusively—well-meaning White) people to do
things for students and parents. We purposefully abandon this power dynamic
and work with communities. Our collaborative approach shifts the
decision-making power to be guided by community members and community knowledge(s).
This, in turn, fosters equitable relationships and trust. It also builds agency
for community members to contribute to decisions of what knowledge is of the
most worth and which outcomes are most desired.
- Curriculum content is grounded in
community epistemologies. Epistemologies
are the orientations towards knowledge that individuals hold, and as curriculum
development fundamentally addresses the question “What knowledge is of most
worth?” (Pinar 2011), socially just education requires that the epistemologies
of the community form the foundation of learning. Beyond representation,
culturally-grounded curriculum allows students to start from what and how they
know, which fosters a more engaging, easier, and empowering learning process.
- Students are encouraged to critically
question and value their realities and (re)make their world as a response to
unjust structures. Building on the
critical social justice orientations of prior scholars (e.g., Ladson-Billings
1995), we see culturally-grounded education processes as fundamentally liberating.
Through this process, students and parents are able to ask and address
questions about their current and future realities.
- Success is defined collaboratively and is meant to (re)make social and economic realities. As our article illustrates, the definition of success cannot be readily understood in fixed terms. Rather, educators must question what success means for their particular students in that particular place and time. And, as Principle #1 states, we must be ready to respond to changing definitions of success over time and space.
We believe these five principles apply to a variety of educational contexts: in the US and internationally, public or private school, and formal or nonformal learning spaces. We think they can serve as a guide for educators who seek to ensure that what they are teaching is aligned with their students’ values, goals, and identities.
The process we illustrate in our article—the research project and our resulting analyses and curricular decisions—is only one example of what can be done, and certainly should not be viewed as the only way in which to do this work. Our process was reflective of traditional Quechua practices like ayni (reciprocity) and community consensus building, which we learned through our collective 15 years of working with Quechua communities in the Peruvian Andes. Appropriate approaches to engage with members of marginalized communities in other contexts will likely look different. Still, we believe that our principles of working with (instead of for) these communities to build a system of education that is iterative and that starts with community strengths, knowledge, voices, and ideas can hold true across cultural contexts and shows promise for facilitating socially-just education opportunities.
Joseph Levitan, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University. His research focuses on issues of social justice in educational leadership and policy—focusing on identity, well-being, and collaborative community processes to redesign educational organizations.
Kayla M. Johnson, Ph.D., is a visiting assistant professor of higher education at the University of Cincinnati. Her research focuses on student voice for improved educational practice—particularly in international education contexts.
References
Castagno, Angelina E., and Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy. (2008). Culturally Responsive Schooling for Indigenous Youth: A Review of the Literature. Review of Educational Research 78 (4): 941–993.
Howard, Tyrone, and Clarence L. Terry, Sr. (2011). Culturally Responsive Pedagogy for African American Students: Promising Programs and Practices for Enhanced Academic Performance. Teaching Education 22 (4): 345–362.
Ladson-Billings, Gloria. (1995). But That’s Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. Theory into Practice 34 (3): 159–165.
Ladson-Billings, Gloria. (1992). Culturally Relevant Teaching: The Key to Making Multicultural Education Work. Research and Multicultural Education: From the Margins to the Mainstream: 106-121.
Levitan, Joseph. (2018). The Danger of a Single Theory: Understanding Students’ Voices and Social Justice in the Peruvian Andes. Teachers College Record 120 (2): 1–36.
Pinar, William F. (2011). The Character of Curriculum Studies: Bildung, Currere, and the Recurring Question of the Subject. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Charters: Poor hiring practices lead to poor performance by Jason A. Engerman
How Do I Use This Thing? The Push for Technology in the Classroom is Increasing and Training for Educators is Staying the Same, by Jeremy Anderson
This reminds me of work done on asset-based pedagogy — looking at the ways local knowledge can inform successful educational practice
As the website says, the epistemological gap persists. As is often the case, this motion makes how to build a curriculum that ground in students’ identities and cultures. This culture whatever to provide and want to have high quality in education in each student has. About this issue, they think they should provide balance students to accept education. On the one hand, it still has a lack of a culturally-grounded curriculum. Many schools still lack the basic courses on their students’ learning, and some race issues influence school have. The website uses Joe to an example, explains the charter school issue. Also, this motion wants to foster social justice. On the other hand, they support the five principles of engaging. These principles are useful in the local country or the other country, even in the international, public or private schools, and formal or informal learning spaces. In this respect, we may as well say the balance of education should be equal and apply to every student. The education unfairly still has in many places. However, we should discover the concept through experience and as students and educators, and we should know-how are the most important with the education development, and education focus. About education, we most focus on teacher teaching and student learning. From my point of view, it would be better like education gives people have more skills and prepare the job. Moreover, these acts always make them skills, which are helping the country developing and better. Although on education, we still have insufficient, as being an educator, we should make everyone know how does important education have, and wants they know which makes how are the most important in a country to develop and status change if they have a good education
As the website says, the epistemological gap persists. As is often the case, this motion makes how to build a curriculum that ground in students’ identities and cultures. This culture whatever to provide and want to have high quality in education in each student has. About this issue, they think they should provide balance students to accept education. On the one hand, it still has a lack of a culturally-grounded curriculum. Many schools still lack the basic courses on their students’ learning, and some race issues influence school have. The website uses Joe to an example, explains the charter school issue. Also, this motion wants to foster social justice. On the other hand, they support the five principles of engaging. These principles are useful in the local country or the other country, even in the international, public or private schools, and formal or informal learning spaces. In this respect, we may as well say the balance of education should be equal and apply to every student. The education unfairly still has in many places. However, we should discover the concept through experience and as students and educators, and we should know-how are the most important with the education development, and education focus. About education, we most focus on teacher teaching and student learning. From my point of view, it would be better like education gives people have more skills and prepare the job. Moreover, these acts always make them skills, which are helping the country developing and better. Although on education, we still have insufficient, as being an educator, we should make everyone know how does important education have, and wants they know which makes how are the most important in a country to develop and status change if they have a good education.
As the website says, the epistemological gap persists. As is often the case, this motion makes how to build a curriculum that ground in students’ identities and cultures. This culture whatever to provide and want to have high quality in education in each student has. About this issue, they think they should provide balance students to accept education. On the one hand, it still has a lack of a culturally-grounded curriculum. Many schools still lack the basic courses on their students’ learning, and some race issues influence school have. The website uses Joe to an example, explains the charter school issue. Also, this motion wants to foster social justice. On the other hand, they support the five principles of engaging. These principles are useful in the local country or the other country, even in the international, public or private schools, and formal or informal learning spaces. In this respect, we may as well say the balance of education should be equal and apply to every student. The education unfairly still has in many places. However, we should discover the concept through experience and as students and educators, and we should know-how are the most important with the education development, and education focus. About education, we most focus on teacher teaching and student learning. From my point of view, it would be better like education gives people have more skills and prepare the job. Moreover, these acts always make them skills, which are helping the country developing and better. Although on education, we still have insufficient, as being an educator, we should make everyone know how does important education have, and wants they know which makes how are the most important in a country to develop and status change if they have a good education.
While students’ identities, backgrounds, and cultures are significant in learning and could form epistemology gaps in their academic performances. The research those educators did amaze me, and we should think of designing a new diverse curriculum to face the concerns of epistemology gaps and encourage students with diverse cultural backgrounds to learn in their own experiences.
I think in our cognitive learning process, reflecting the knowledge with personal experiences would help with building that information into our long-term memory. Therefore, developing a Culturally-Grounded Curriculum is what we really need.
I have an example of my own. I am a Chinese student that started studying abroad in high school. It took a long period for me to accept the new curriculum in the U.S. The way teachers taught and the examples they provided in class did not seem familiar at all. Thus I had lower efficiency while accepting the concepts from the courses. I finally realized the greatest difficulty for a student when the curriculum does not lie in one’s cultural background.
After all, I think an individual’s identity plays an essential role as the author mentioned. Thinking of how to design a diverse grounded curriculum could be a huge work, but it would definitely make significant progress in our educational system.
I thought that this was a very interesting read and it is very true that there is very little to no representation in curriculum for cultures other than white. But this is also true in society as a whole. While it is getting more prevalent to have black characters in a tv show or as barbies who are represented by what they actually look like it is not likely that you are going to see things that represent things of an Indian culture, or native American who have been oppressed for hundreds of years in our country. It is important to teach the young minds who are the future of our country that it is okay to have a culture that is different from others. But it is also important to teach white children about other culture, so that they one day can be accepting of those cultures. One point that I thought was very interesting was how the community would create the curriculum together. While I think that it could be very hard to use everyone’s input it would be beneficial to take input from the community because they are the ones who are going to see the product of the learning. It could also provide more family support for students in schools because if parents know that they are learning something that will create a better future not only for the individual but also the community it could have a very big impact. This theory of using culture based curriculum could overall be very beneficial in many communities and should be implemented not only in the United States but Internationally as well.
I found this piece to be intriguing as I am an education and public policy major with minors in women studies and sociology. The curriculum is designed by people who have minimal experience with minorities or historically oppressed people. The increased standardized curriculum of public education focuses on math and reading. History that is taught in k-12 lacks history of people of color and women other than a few token activists like Martin Luther King. A curriculum that does not represent the diverse students of America and tell their stories preserves the systems of racial hierarchy and discrimination. However, looking at who are in positions of power (predominately white men) and what our society views as important education (math and science), the culturally-grounded curriculum seems unlikely. Unless teachers take it upon themselves, they have the flexibility and resources to do so. I do believe that a culturally-based curriculum is vital for the demolishing of white, western sense of superiority, and negative stereotypes. A culturally-based curriculum not only gives voice and powers the identities of marginalized people but gives students multiple lenses to view the world becoming more aware of biases. “He discusses how to reflect through a multi-theory lens to become more aware of, and to mitigate, interpretive biases. Joe argues, as do others that critical awareness and mitigation of biases are important for any educator, but particularly for educators from outsider positionalities.” Everyone has their vantage point and interpret situations based on their knowledge and lived experiences. Providing students with multiple lenses outside of their positions will help create social cohesion in my view.
The slogan “for us but without us”, “nothing about us without us” and what was mentioned in the last paragraph “working with (instead of for) these communities” is all to say that when making decisions that affect a population, that populations opinions and concerns should be heard, in history and even today this is still not the case. In this piece it highlights the importance of educators being able to identify the culture of their classrooms and adjusting the material they teach accordingly. It was stated that the principles introduced are not a “one size fits all” solution but it helps guide the conversation in an effective way that results in a more relevant curriculum for the students they are teaching. Adjusting the curriculum is not the only way to provide socially-just opportunities but it’s certainly one that can reach a wider and younger population. One has to acknowledge the fact that when school budgets are lowered, the first to go are specials class, which is where including cultural backgrounds would be the easiest to implement. Since social studies and history is not a topic that standardized tests focus on, those subjects again where it allows more an opportunity to include culturally relevant topics is often times shortened to make time for students to focus on math, English and science. Having a curriculum that is culturally based, meaning that any topic that springs out of it has some type of identity relatedness to it will help keep students interested and engaged, along with being constantly reassured they belong.
This article works to address the biases within typical curricula and lack of culturally diverse education. The authors emphasize the need for schools to take input form students, families, and educators regarding what knowledge is valuable to be taught. This does not only apply to K-12 education. It is important that institutions of higher education make socially just education a priority within degree programs. At The Pennsylvania State University, I currently serve as the undergraduate student voice on the Special Committee on Curricular Coherence and Curricular Development. Reading this article gave me more perspective on the impact our group can have on typically underrepresented communities within our university. I specifically like the idea of curriculum development as an iterative process. As society changes, it is important that education be able to change with it. This also allows for students to be critical of their education and advocate for change to be implemented when appropriate. For curriculum to be successful in its purpose, the recipients must see its value through relation to the content or application to their world. When this is the case, I think it important for educators to share their stories of success so that their peers may follow such an example.
It’s become evident that our nation’s schools are becoming increasingly diverse today, more than ever before, yet our public schools lack cultural driven curriculum that students from different backgrounds can relate to and keep engaged in. Although this seems to be the case, it doesn’t necessarily surprise me that schools haven’t adopted curriculum that caters to all students. I think that it is important to celebrate other cultures and that schools are the perfect platform to establish this ideology. I agree that when students can relate to curriculum and see people that look like them in the books they are reading and the in the lessons being taught they are more likely to be engaged because of the significance of this. I enjoyed reading the principles of collaboratively developing culturally-grounded curriculum. This section highlights important topics surrounded the idea of a culturally- grounded curriculum, such as why is it important and if this is implemented what is worth being taught. I also enjoyed reading that this could become a community project whereas the community would have a say in the decision making process when it comes to this type of curriculum because it establishes trust and builds a sense of community.