Revolutionizing Education
AACTE’s DEI Video on The Importance of Culturally Relevant Teaching
Ed Prep Matters features the “Revolutionizing Education” column to spotlight the many ways AACTE, member institutions, and partners are pioneering leading-edge research, models, strategies and programs that focus on the three core values outlined in the current AACTE strategic plan: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Quality and impact; and Inquiry and Innovation.
The next segment of the AACTE Diversity, Equity and Inclusion video series features AACTE’s strategic priority to advocate for high-quality educator preparation. Equitable access to education for students from all cultures requires teachers to use knowledge, frame of references, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning more relevant and effective to them. In AACTE’s DEI video, “The Importance of Culturally Relevant Teaching,” leading educators discuss a teaching pedagogy that affirms students’ differences and diversity.
“Culturally responsive pedagogy … means engaging in your practice and art of teaching in a way that’s going to speak to me from where I am, and what I experience in my everyday life,” says Renée A. Middleton, dean of Patton College of Education at Ohio University. “[An educator who is] cross-culturally confident is not someone who has memorized all the scripts of how to act in a particular country or region, it’s someone who’s adaptive, who’s a good decision-maker, can think on the fly, and learn from their mistakes,” says Jennifer Klafehn, research scientist at Educational Testing Service. “We really believe that to be an excellent teacher you don’t just need to know your content and have effective delivery strategies. You really need to understand the context of children’s lives,” says Eva Zygmunt, professor of early childhood, youth and family studies at Ball State University. “What that would allow for is more conversations about engaging with and working with students of color, understanding more of what cultural lenses they come from—understand the diversity that happens within students,” says Donald Easton-Brooks, dean of the college of education at University Nevada Reno.
Stay tuned for more clips in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Educator Preparation video series available on AACTE’s Video Wall. Help AACTE spread the word by sharing the videos with your social network!
Tags: diversity, equity, inclusion, media, revolutionizing education, strategic plan
