Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy, What's the Difference? Does it Matter?

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy Lays the Groundwork: A Summary and (likely) Oversimplification

In the early 90s, scholars coming primarily from the Black feminist studies discipline such as Gloria Ladson-Billings, Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, and Geneva Gay among many others, sought to address educational disparities and educational trauma for students of color in the education system. A lot of this work started by naming the problem: 1. education systems and most curriculum are designed by white educators for white students that 2. often do harm to the learning of Black and Latinx students 3. because the curriculum and methodology assumes white, Eurocentric culture and ways of knowing as the dominant norm. Essentially, many students of color experience a cultural disconnect between their home culture/ways of knowing and the culture at school designed with the success of white students in mind. Additionally, the work of these scholars also helped to expand the understanding of the role of culture in education to include attention to cultural communication patterns, cultural mores/values, and group/social interaction patterns (Irvine and Ladson-Billings, specifically). In her 1995 article "Towards a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy," Ladson-Billings posits a "theoretical model that not only addresses student achievement but also helps students to accept and affirm their cultural identity while developing critical perspectives that challenge inequities that schools (and other institutions) perpetuate. I term this pedagogy, culturally relevant pedagogy" (469).

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) Gives CRP a Loving, Intersectional, Nudge Into the Future

Django Paris (who first critiqued CRP in this 2012 article) and H. Samy Alim build on the work done by scholars like Ladson-Billings as well as Geneva Gay and focus on using education to sustain culture. For Paris and Alim, CSP “explicitly calls for schools to be a site for sustaining the cultural ways of being of communities of color” (“What is CSP” 5) without drawing “...over-deterministic links between language, literacies, cultural practices, and race/ethnicity” (“What is CSP” 7). In their critique, too much of the work of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy simplifies culture into only longstanding cultural practices or falls into the trap of making a one-one mapping of race-language use. CSP “shifts towards contemporary understandings of culture as dynamic and fluid” (“What is CSP” 8). The authors argue that longstanding cultural practices and ways of knowing “should certainly be sustained, even as we make room for how youth of today are reworking this set of knowledges to meet their current cultural and political realities ("What is CSP" 8). In a very, very simple sense, CSP is not looking for better, culturally responsive, methods to mold students of color into the dominant culture of white education. It looks for better ways to foster, develop, support, validate, and sustain the multifaceted cultural identities of students while accounting for the myriad ways that these students may face discrimination. Paris and Alim argue that "we cannot separate culture from the bodies enacting culture and the ways those bodies are subjected to systematic discrimination" such as class, race, gender, language, sexuality, and ability.

CSP also looks further inward and moves beyond the purely celebratory nature of most asset pedagogies, allowing and demanding room to critique the ways that cultural practices can reinforce existing disparities in gender, sexuality, and ability. It's absolutely important to celebrate and affirm culture, but it denies the experience of many members of a culture if that culture is somehow above critique. Paris and Alim argue that, while many asset pedagogies such as Hip Hop pedagogy "may seemingly serve the needs of many students of color, particularly young, able-bodied, cishetero men, [these pedagogies] may unwittingly reproduce forms of exclusion in our classrooms and communities" ("What is CSP" 11). Like many second/third waves of a movement, CSP asks students and educators to engage with the intersections of discrimination and oppression, even if engaging with those intersections and building solidarity between groups requires us to look inward. Students can and should have the opportunity to engage critically with their own cultures as they themselves move and push their cultures forward.

CSP prepares students and teachers for a future that is multilingual and multiethnic ("What is CSP" 6). Paris and Alim implore us to rethink our teaching, even if we are progressive educators, to respond to the dynamic students and the changing world:

"For too long we have taught our youth (and our teachers) that Dominant American English and other White middle-class normed practices and ways of being alone are the key to power, while denying the languages and other cultural practices that students of color bring into the classroom. Ironically, this outdated philosophy will not grant our young people access to power; rather, it may increasingly deny them that access" ("What is CSP" 6).

Our work in this reading group will focus primarily on CSP, though we may dip into older articles written before Paris' 2012 call to rethink CRP and the landmark book by Paris/Alim in 2017. To read more on CSP and how it makes necessary moves forward from the groundbreaking work done by scholars in the 90s, check out some of the resources below:

More from Paris and Alim on CSP

Django Paris and H. Samy Alim: “What is Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy and Why Does it Matter?” (introduction to their book cited in this page)

Author Interview: Django Paris and H. Samy Alim on “Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies”

Audio: Conversation with Django Paris: “The Look and Feel of Culturally Responsive Instruction”

“What does CSP Look Like?” Six Short Examples from Teachers

Project READY: Reimagining Equity & Access for Diverse Youth: Module on CSP

Videos

Video: “What is Culturally Responsive Pedagogy?” Jacqueline Jordan Irvine and Geneva Gay

Video: “Successful Teachers of African American Children” Gloria Ladson-Billings

Video: “Nicole West-Burns: Culturally Responsive and Relevant Pedagogy @ U of Ottawa”