SUGGESTIONS FOR FUNDING SWPBS EFFORTS:  Helpful hints for your school

Our Featured Products

• Adapting Curriculum & Instruction
• Collaboration & Teaming
• Differentiation Live!

Culturally Responsive Practice

Difficult conversations about race, ethnicity, and equity are necessary. Data indicates that the benefits of even the most successful evidence-based interventions are not guaranteed to be equally effective for all groups (Skiba, Horner et al., 2008). Therefore, we design our work to be culturally responsive and to promote equity. We investigate identity, power, and privilege. We support educators in developing the skills necessary to restructure school and society. We challenge deficit perspectives and redesign the systems that support them.

Culturally responsive practice is intended to ensure that all groups are benefitting equally from instruction and classroom management practices. It is often applied for race and ethnicity, but should be considered whenever there is a group that is not benefitting in an educational environment. It involves a set of congruent educator/stakeholder behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system that works for all students. At the classroom level, a culturally responsive approach means being aware of cultural differences, examining teaching materials and practice, and adapting programs and interventions, as appropriate, to respond to different student needs. On an institutional level, culturally responsive practice involves monitoring the effects of programs and interventions for all students, especially those from groups that have been historically marginalized. At its heart, cultural responsiveness involves self reflection, continuous examination of data, raising difficult and sometimes awkward questions about why some students succeed and others do not, and making adjustments that can improve the instructional/disciplinary match for all groups of students.

Resources