During this school year, I’m featuring a post each month on errors teachers often make when trying to apply culturally responsive teaching in the classroom and what to do, instead.

10 Misbeliefs About Culturally Responsive Teaching

Gholdy Muhammad, professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Illinois Chicago, is the author of the bestselling Scholastic books Cultivating Genius (2020) and Unearthing Joy (2023):

“Never forget that intelligence rules the world and ignorance carries the burden. Therefore, remove yourself as far as possible from ignorance and seek as far as possible to be intelligent.” –Marcus Garvey

When I thought deeply about this question, I relied on what I’ve heard from educators and observed in classrooms. I reflected on my own misconceptions about education and was reminded of the words of Marcus Garvey and the quest for seeking truth and knowledge. Garvey warns that a lack of intelligence carries a burden that explains why we don’t see culturally responsive education mandated in policy, curriculum, standards, assessment, teacher evaluation, or teacher education.

Below are common misunderstandings about culturally responsive education, which I situate as “misbeliefs” because misbeliefs lead to ignorance in ideologies, which leads to harmful practices. Hopefully, this list will inspire discussions about history, oppression, and freedom, as well as needed shifts toward humanizing policies and practices. Culturally responsive education is at the heart of my instructional framework, which encourages teachers to focus instruction on the pursuit of identity development, skills, intellect, criticality, and joy.

1. Misbelief: Culturally responsive education is new to the field. Gloria Ladson-Billings gave us language and research that reminded us that Black ancestors have been implementing the practice for centuries. We can study historical manifestations of culturally responsive education through literary societies, Black independent schools, newspapers, and other educational publications. To truly understand culturally responsive education, one must study the Black women educators and scholars who have paved the way for us to learn and build upon.

2. Misbelief: Culturally responsive education is a strategy. We must not confine or reduce the concept. It is an educational approach, a framework, and the means by which to “do” education and to live by.

3. Misbelief: Culturally responsive education impedes high achievement. Are children achieving at their highest potential right now? No. Culturally responsive education contextualizes learning to children’s identities, worldly knowledge, and socio-political consciousness. Culturally responsive education doesn’t “replace” excellence; it creates excellence.

4. Misbelief: Culturally responsive education is a synonym for critical race theory (CRT). Culturally responsive education is so special that it doesn’t adhere to just one theory but multiple theories—cognitive, sociocultural, constructivism, critical (including CRT), and several others depending on the curriculum. When an educational approach adheres to multiple theories, it’s a clear sign that the approach is sound.

5. Misbelief: If teachers simply add multicultural authors or characters in stories, then they will have an equitable culturally responsive education curriculum. False. One can still teach a multicultural topic or Black author or figure in history in incomplete ways. Representation is a start but is not enough. A full curriculum will teach, measure, and assess identity, skills, intellect, criticality, and joy. Teachers need guides on how to do what Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz calls “archaeological explorations of self” to unpack and disrupt the oppressions and deficit thinking.

6. Misbelief: Culturally responsive education is only for Black or brown children. It is for every child, especially those who have been historically excluded from the curriculum. White children need culturally responsive education, too, especially when it comes to the teaching of criticality and anti-racism.

7. Misbelief: If children are successful in academic skills, they don’t need the other parts of culturally responsive education. This is disrespectful to the beauty of education. If students have traditional academic success, why wouldn’t teachers go further and teach them identity development, intellect, criticality, and joy. The goal is to give them the highest type of education they need for the fullness of their lives.

8. Misbelief: Teachers don’t need to center love in culturally responsive education. There is a great absence of love in the conversation surrounding education and the policy directions. At the root of culturally responsive education is love for all of humanity. Too often, I see other practices where educators are not loving children, especially BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and children with disabilities.

9. Misbelief: Culturally responsive education only benefits children. It advances the education of teachers and leaders, too. When I teach in ways that honor culturally responsive education, I am smarter, more conscious, and more joyful.

10. Misbelief: Culturally responsive education is going away. As long as we have unfairness, mistreatment, racism, and oppression, there will be a fight for reparations and joy. Culturally responsive education strives for a liberatory education for all.

Finally, it’s important to see joy as a prominent learning objective. Culturally responsive education is not just about teaching “hard histories,” it is about teaching and assessing joy with each lesson and unit plan. Joy is the balance of sociopolitical consciousness and the teaching of anti-oppression. It is the teaching of beauty, art, wonder, and happiness in the face of adversity. It is helping children see the good in the world. Joy must be the ultimate goal of schools.

Why do so many teachers get culturally responsive education wrong? Because too many teacher education programs are not grounded in the concept, and there are not enough policies for it in schools. We must teach teachers and disrupt ignorance as it has been the cure for nothing in education.

Defining ‘Students’ Culture in Stereotypical Ways’

Shondel Nero, Ed.D., is an applied linguist and professor of language education at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture Education and Human Development. She teaches in the graduate programs in TESOL and bilingual education:

Culturally responsive teaching is one of various asset-based approaches to education, which incorporates students’ identities, lived experiences, and knowledge in the classroom as tools for effective instruction, especially with respect to culturally/linguistically diverse populations.

The most common things that teachers get wrong about culturally responsive teaching are: (a) how they define culture itself, which, understandably, is a very complex word, and, (b) based on their understanding of culture, the types of texts they choose and activities they design in the classroom in order to practice culturally responsive teaching.

With respect to (a), many teachers, tend to define students’ culture in stereotypical ways, focusing on the “visible” and/or “audible” aspects of culture, such as food, festivals, music, forms of dress, language, and racial phenotype, which are, indeed, aspects of culture. Meanwhile, they ignore other less apparent aspects of culture that go much deeper, such as beliefs, values, cultural norms, practices, and expectations, which actually affect students’ behaviors in more consequential ways in the classroom.

Moreover, students’ knowledge is also likely to be undervalued or overvalued based on teachers’ cultural stereotypes of specific groups of students. The focus on “visible” aspects of culture leads to essentializing students’ behaviors and knowledge and presents a narrow view of students’ cultures for their peers in class.

With respect to (b), for example, focusing on Chinese culture such as food items only during Chinese New Year (which only happens annually) gives an incomplete picture of the Chinese culture; or assigning students to read a short story about Mexican immigrants to connect with “Latinx” students may miss the mark culturally and might actually make students feel disconnected (the opposite of responsive teaching).

If the class is mostly comprised of Dominican students, who may not share the same cultural practices and values, it also suggests the teacher didn’t do their homework to find out deeply about students’ lived experiences, the diversity within their backgrounds, and the value systems at play in their respective communities before preparing to teach said students.

Culturally responsive teaching requires teachers’ learning about, connecting with, affirming, and growing students’ knowledge through activities that call upon students’ values and lived experiences. This needs to be done as a normal part of the curriculum (not only on specially designated days or months) so that all students learn and share cultural knowledge for everyone’s benefit (e.g., asking students to interview their family members on a specific issue and discussing the underlying values of the interview with the whole class to center values as part of all cultures).

‘We All...Come to School With a Culture’

Denita Harris, Ph.D., is the assistant superintendent for diversity, equity, and inclusion for the Wayne Township school district in Indianapolis. She has over 25 years of experience as a teacher, assistant principal, and district-level administrator. She is the recipient of the 2019 INTESOL (Indiana Teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages) Best of the Best in K-12 Education and the 2017 and 2020 African American Excellence in Education Award. Find her on X @HarrisLeads:

There are two common misconceptions teachers have about culturally responsive teaching. One is that only teachers who have students of color need to know and shift their practices. Another misconception about culturally responsive teaching is that it requires more time. It is the thought that this is an additional practice—something more to do in a field where it feels like we being asked to do more each year.

Both of these misconceptions could not be further from the truth. Culturally responsive teaching is recognizing that we all, regardless of our race and ethnicity, come to school with a culture. A person’s childhood, upbringing, unique experiences, and how one views themself and other people have all shaped each individual’s culture.

Culturally responsive teaching is the way in which teachers learn, value, and utilize each student’s respective culture to create a classroom where every student becomes a learner and has a sense of belonging. It is where student agency and cultural capital are clearly encouraged, welcomed, and made use of in daily interactions and classroom curriculum and instruction, regardless of a student’s skin color.

Although culturally responsive teaching started with students of color in mind, the framework has evolved to be one that acknowledges and recognizes that all students benefit from an asset-based method of teaching. Again, it is the intentional knowing that we all have a culture to be shared and celebrated.

Culturally responsive teaching is not an additional task. When done correctly, the principles should be the standard of every classroom. From how a teacher builds relationships and interacts with students to how a teacher intentionally incorporates relevant materials, as well as how instruction is delivered. It is not one aspect of teaching. Culturally responsive teaching encompasses all the principles and aspects a teacher does to ensure student’s thrive socially and academically.

Thanks to Gholdy, Shondel, and Denita for contributing their thoughts!

Today’s post answered this question:

What do you think are the most common things teachers get wrong about culturally responsive teaching?

Part One in this series featured Zaretta Hammond.

In Part Two, Françoise Thenoux, Jehan Hakim, and Courtney Rose contributed their responses.

In Part Three, Crystal M. Watson, Tiffani Maher, Kristi Mirich-Glenwright, and Keisha Rembert shared their comments.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.

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