What Is the Role of Materials in Culturally Responsive Education?

Historically, educational spaces in the United States have privileged certain norms and ways of teaching and learning that emerged from predominantly Western European or White cultures. As a result, many educational practices that acknowledge and support communities with non-White or non-Western backgrounds have been omitted and/or erased. That has progressively changed, as teachers have integrated more inclusive practices and materials, and researchers have published more studies about these practices and materials. But while there has been progress, over the past year multicultural approaches to education, such as culturally responsive education, have been affected by misinformed references to critical race theory.¹ New policies either passed, introduced, or emerging are restricting inclusive teaching practices or causing some educators to avoid materials that make references to race or ethnicity in classrooms.²

Culturally responsive education, when done well, is designed to make all students feel they are a part of the educational community. As Geneva Gay of the University of Washington explains in her 2018 book, culturally responsive teaching is an asset-based approach that uses “the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them.”³ Culturally responsive education also builds students’ accurate knowledge of diverse people and their awareness of different perspectives, and uses their existing knowledge and experiences as bridges to new content. While some critics suggest culturally responsive education practices only support students who are a part of groups that are systematically marginalized, such as those based on race and ethnicity, this approach can support all students to become engaged learners in content, including White, European American students.⁴ With this approach to teaching and learning, educators make meaningful connections between the curriculum and home experiences, validate and incorporate students’ culture in the learning environment, and build on students’ preexisting knowledge and skills.

Rudine Sims Bishop, a professor emeritus at Ohio State University widely recognized for highlighting the value of diverse representation in children’s literature, established the concept of mirrors, windows, and sliding doors in a 1990 essay to describe the types of experiences literature offers young readers.⁵ She referred to materials that make connections with students’ daily experiences as “mirrors” and materials that expose students to other contexts and cultures—and help them acknowledge and appreciate diverse cultures—as “windows.”⁶ Educators, librarians, and scholars within multicultural education, like culturally responsive education and culturally sustaining pedagogy, have documented the importance of integrating materials that reflect students’ lives as well as expose them to new environments and experiences to support student learning.⁷ Scholars of educational and instructional materials have used these concepts to investigate the frequency with which social groups are presented and the portrayal of varying social groups.

New America’s 2020 guide to culturally responsive education identifies eight competencies that educators should acquire to become adept at this type of teaching. The third competency—“Draw on Students’ Culture to Shape Curriculum and Instruction”—includes the evaluation of educational and instructional materials. It pushes educators to scan these materials for stereotypes and to seek out resources reflecting students’ cultures as well as those that depict his(her)(their)stories,⁸ traditions, and experiences of different cultural groups.⁹ New America’s report on LGBTQ-inclusive teaching presents recommendations for practice that include critically examining the messages classroom materials send to students.¹⁰

Rather than seeing cultural responsiveness and academic goals as separate agendas, educators can combine them to support student learning.¹¹ Incorporating culturally responsive materials enhances students’ engagement with classroom content, makes them more active learners, and can improve academic achievement over the school year, particularly when teachers initiate a lesson with materials that are mirrors and then progress to materials that are windows.¹² A 2012 study by Beverly Faircloth, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, explored the connection between learning identity in two qualitative studies with a racial and ethnically diverse group of ninth-graders in English classes designed for remedial, restart, and struggling students.One result showed that when the educator broadened the literature to include characters that mirrored the students demographically, culturally, and experientially, students were more positively engaged learners, asking questions about the content and completing their assignments. There was a positive connection between students relating to the characters and characters’ experiences and engagement in their learning.¹³

Students are also encouraged to learn when teachers show they prioritize relating to students through the selection of materials. For instance, while at Otterbein College, E. B. Smith conducted research in 1995 showing that when lessons and activities became meaningful for students, they were more thorough and attentive in their work and participatory in classroom discussions.¹⁴ And studies on children’s picture books show that integration of culturally responsive educational materials can also support written and oral language development and reading comprehension.¹⁵

In the 2015 book More Mirrors in the Classroom, the authors use research and practice to demonstrate how culturally responsive education texts that are mirrors allow students to use their existing cultural knowledge to understand texts, which includes language, social contexts, and individuals’ responses in certain situations.¹⁶ This in turn reduces students’ cognitive load in terms of working memory as they are learning information.¹⁷ As a result, students can use more cognitive processes to focus on meaning-making, which improves reading comprehension.

From Doc McStuffins and Dora the Explorer to Pippi Longstocking, characters can impact students’ learning more than educators may realize. Characters can be important for engaging students in materials and content, particularly if they are familiar or students relate to them. Some research from Sandra Calvert, Bonnie Strong, Eliza Jacobs, and Emily Conger of Georgetown University suggests that identification with characters may positively influence children’s learning more than for those who do not identify with the characters.¹⁸ Studies with students of older grade levels show that they may identify with characters based on familiar circumstances and life experiences, similar personalities, a common heritage and set of cultural nuances, and/or the same cultural affiliation.¹⁹ Similarities to characters based on social identity groups, such as race, ethnicity, and gender, and shared hobbies and interests can build connection to characters; this can enhance student content learning and curiosity about specific career fields.²⁰

Characters and Content Learning

Research shows that when teachers contextualize lessons and activities based on students’ experiences, interests, identities, and cultures, those who previously resisted academic content may respond more positively to that content. These students may also form personal connections to the content area, value these connections, and invest more time and attention in producing higher quality assignments.²¹ Teachers can use materials where students identify with characters and circumstances as bridges to traditional and canonical materials and texts included in the curriculum.²² Culturally responsive education materials also expose students to new ideas and different perspectives, help develop their confidence as learners, and enable them to discover relevance to characters and experiences that may not be reflective of their daily circumstances.²³ In 2018, results from a student survey published in the Texas Journal of Literacy Education indicated that while high school students value having their culture and experiences reflected in the characters and stories of materials, they also want to learn about people who have different circumstances, perspectives, and cultures.²⁴

Characters and Social Groups/Self

In addition to helping students learn the content required by subject-area standards, educational materials—and in fact, media of all kinds, whether labeled educational or not—indirectly teach students about language, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and cross-cultural knowledge.²⁵ These materials also inform students about what society expects of them and others based on social identity markers, and how society values them based on these markers.²⁶ Scholars have defined this aspect of media as “societal curriculum,” which includes learning about various cultural groups that range from positive to negative.²⁷ Media characters can influence children’s development of their own racial-ethnic and gender group identity as well as their understanding of different races, ethnicities, and genders.²⁸

Through the content and portrayal of characters, the media influences children’s understanding of themselves and others, career expectations, and behaviors.²⁹ For instance, consider a 2006 study in the Journal of Career Development. It asked high school students about their favorite media characters on television, finding that they often selected characters that reflect a similar social group affiliation (i.e., race, gender, etc.) as themselves—and that these characters can influence their own career aspirations.³⁰ One study with middle school students showed that students of varying gender, racial, and ethnic groups benefited from being exposed to diverse people engaged in STEM careers, which in some cases countered the stereotypes that certain people were neither interested in STEM disciplines nor contributed to the field.³¹ All students should have opportunities to experience characters that reflect their social identity engaged in a variety of activities and professional pursuits.

However, while research shows the benefits of culturally responsive education materials as tools for engaging students and exposing them to different perspectives and experiences, some studies indicate there is an imbalance in portrayal. Studies of literature curricula, including research on a large national sample from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999 (ECLS-K), found that more books depict White, male American characters and traditions, meaning White students and male students see more mirrors than windows. Individuals not of that racial and gender group have more windows than mirrors.³²