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Culturally Relevant/Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy

A key part of culturally responsive, inclusive, and anti-racist pedagogy is seeing students' home language as an asset that can be leveraged in the classroom. Some literature goes even beyond "cultural relevance", arguing that anti-racist teachers should seek to revitalize and sustain students' cultures and languages, particularly in the case of Indigenous languages, which might otherwise be lost. The following resources are focused on culturally responsive pedagogy.

Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students (Hammond, 2014)
In this book, Zaretta Hammond draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to offer an innovative approach for designing and implementing brain-compatible culturally responsive instruction.
Culture to the Max!: Culturally Responsive Teaching and Practice (McDonald, Ross, Ross, Walker, 2022)
This book offers an in-depth look into the practice and implementation of Culturally Responsive Teaching that can inform curriculum development, teacher evaluation, and classroom and culture evaluation.
Courageous Conversations about Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools and Beyond (Singleton, 2021)
Deepen the dialogue to address racial disparities in your organization Schools, like all organizations, face a nearly insurmountable hurdle when addressing racial inequities--the inability to talk candidly about race.
Applying critical race theory to social and emotional learning programs in schools (Attaya & Hilliard, 2023)
In this paper, we argue that when SEL programming is implemented in a color-evasive and value-neutral way, it can exacerbate racial inequities and lead to harmful practices within schools, particularly for Black, Indigenous, and other students of color. We examine how an integration of critical race theory and SEL may, instead, contribute to all students’ positive development and discuss the ways in which this programming may drive systemic change within school communities.
Culturally and Historically Responsive Education (Muhammad, G., 2023)
This policy brief aims to problematize the curricular issues that have traditionally framed schools from the 1600s onward. These framings have taught literacy as decontextualized skills, disconnected from students’ lives, their consciousness, and their joy.
Inclusive Pedagogy and Universal Design Approaches for Diverse Learning Environments (Sanger, 2020)
This chapter highlights two educational frameworks—Inclusive Pedagogy and Universal Design for Learning (UDL)—that emphasize the educational importance of imbuing all students with a sense of belonging in the classroom and curriculum. Drawing from these approaches, the chapter suggests a series of concrete strategies for educators to enthusiastically harness diversity and amplify student learning. While written for college educators, most of it also applies to K-12 teachers.

Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Resources

Playful Literacies, Creativity, and Multilingual Practices (Yoon, 2019)
"Emergent language learners develop literacy through social interactions in multiple, overlapping communities: home, school, peer groups, and popular culture. The author focuses on how classrooms can be spaces that cultivate authentic literacy engagements while incorporating and valuing students' existing language resources."
Critical Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy and Indigenous Education Sovereignty (McCarty & Lee, 2014)
In this article, Teresa L. McCarty and Tiffany S. Lee present critical culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy as a necessary concept to understand and guide educational practices for Native American learners. ...McCarty and Lee argue that given the current linguistic, cultural, and educational realities of Native American communities, culturally sustaining pedagogy in these settings must also be understood as culturally revitalizing pedagogy."
Creative Failures in Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (Puzio, Newcomer, Pratt, McNeely, & Jacobs, 2017)
"Rather than building upon students' linguistic and cultural backgrounds, schools often "subtract" these rich resources from students' learning experiences... The language and literacy practices of students' homes are oftentimes left out of the curriculum in favor of English-language texts and materials that reflect mainstream cultural values and norms. The end result is the eradication of the linguistic, literate, and cultural practices that culturally and linguistically diverse students bring from home."
Culturally sustaining disciplinary language and literacy instruction for Hmong-American children (Spycher, Girard, & Moua, 2019)
"The cultural and linguistic assets students bring to the classroom, valuable resources for learning, are often neglected in school, depriving students an opportunity to leverage and expand such resources. This article argues for an instructional approach that integrates disciplinary language and literacy teaching with culturally sustaining pedagogy. We synthesize research and theories on the approach and provide illustrative examples with elementary grades Hmong-American children."
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy: A Needed Change in Stance, Terminology, and Practice (Paris, 2012)
"Recently, however, I have begun to question if the terms "relevant" and "responsive" are really descriptive of much of the teaching and research founded upon them and, more importantly, if they go far enough in their orientation to the languages and literacies and other cultural practices of communities marginalized by systemic inequalities to ensure the valuing and maintenance of our multiethnic and multilingual society. In this essay, I offer the term and stance of culturally sustaining pedagogy as an alternative that, I believe, embodies some of the best research and practice in the resource pedagogy tradition and as a term that supports the value of our multiethnic and multilingual present and future."
Revitalizing Indigenous languages, cultures, and histories in Montana, across the United States and around the globe (Carjuzaa, 2017)
"Many educators have sung the praises of Indian Education for All, Montana’s constitutional mandate, and heard the successes of Montana’s Indigenous language revitalization efforts which reverberate around the globe. Teaching Indigenous languages is especially, challenging since there are limited numbers of fluent speakers and scarce resources resulting from harsh education and language policies imposed by the US federal government throughout the nineteenth- and twentieth centuries... By embracing culturally responsive pedagogy, a dramatic change to education in Montana to truly promote the espoused democratic ideals of justice and equity has resulted."
Teacher-Family Solidarity as Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy and Practice (Hong, 2022)
In this research article, the authors examine the intersections of culturally sustaining pedagogy and critical family engagement to explore the possibilities for equitable family-school partnerships in urban schools. Based on the common values of trusting and caring relationships and power disruption within those fields, as well as data from a multi-year qualitative study of teachers and their relationships with students’ families, the authors introduce the framework of teacher-family solidarity.
Translingual Play that Promotes Cultural Connections, Invention, and Regulation: A LatCrit Perspective (Arreguín-Anderson, 2018)
"Using Latino critical race theory as a lens, this qualitative study explored ways in which young children’s translanguaging practices informed the design of culturally relevant sociodramatic spaces in a bilingual early childhood classroom located along the Texas/Mexico border in South Texas."
“You Need Some Laugh Bones!”: Leveraging AAL in a High School English Classroom (Vetter, 2013)
"The purpose of this study was to examine how a White teacher (Gina) responded to African American Language (AAL) in ways that situated students as valuable members of a high school English classroom... Implications from the study suggest that teaching high school English is not only about knowledge of content or best practices but also about leveraging multiple languages in ways that position students as participants of a literacy community."

Lesson/Curriculum Analysis and Observation Tools

Which Curriculum Audit Is Best for Your School? (Porosoff, 2022)
The article discusses use of initials DEI by schools and education organizations to refer to diversity, equity and inclusion and mentions charts showing types of curriculum audits. Topics discussed include building system to ensure participation of members and benefit assessment without undue burden, curriculum built to foster liberation and plans of care for those experienced harm.
NYU Culturally Responsive Curriculum Scorecards
The Culturally Responsive Curriculum Scorecards were developed collaboratively by NYC parents, students, educators and researchers, as a tool to help determine the extent to which English Language Art, Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) curricula are (or are not) culturally responsive.
Learning for Justice: Social Justice Standards
The Social Justice Standards are a road map for anti-bias education at every stage of K-12 instruction. Comprised of anchor standards and age-appropriate learning outcomes, the standards provide a common language and organizational structure educators can use to guide curriculum development and make schools more just and equitable.
Making culturally responsive mathematics teaching explicit: a lesson analysis tool (Aguierre & Zwala, 2013)
In this article, the authors introduce an innovative lesson analysis tool that focuses on integrating mathematical thinking, language, culture, and social justice.
Culturally Responsive Instruction Observation Protocol
CRIOP is a validated observation tool on culturally responsive instruction. Boston Public Schools provides additional resources on the CRIOP pillars that can be accessed through the left-hand menu.
Massachusetts: Supporting Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining Practices
At the bottom of their page on cultrally responsive and sustaining teaching practices, Massachusetts has a culturally responsive teaching rubric and "look fors". Their video page also has a protocol for discussion and reflection on culturally responsive teaching using classroom videos.

Funds of Knowledge

"Funds of Knowledge" are the "historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and wellbeing" (Moll et al., 1992, p. 134). Often, a community's knowledge, skills, and resources are not visible or valued in school contexts. "Funds of knowledge" helps teachers see that they have much to learn from families and communities and it helps them to value multiple ways of knowing.

Research:

Here is some of the research base on this topic:

Formation and Transformation of Funds of Knowledge among U.S.-Mexican Households (Vélez-Ibáñez and Greenberg, 1992)
This is one of the seminal articles on Funds of Knowlege: "Public schools have relied on a deficiency model to structure instruction for minority children that underestimates the funds of knowledge that U.S.-Mexican households contain. We argue that these funds are not only a key to understanding the cultural systems in which U.S.-Mexican children emerge, but are also important and useful assets in the classroom."
Funds of Knowledge for Teaching: Using a Qualitative Approach to Connect Homes and Classrooms (Moll, Amanti, Neff, and Gonzalez, 1992)
This is one of the seminal articles on the concept of "Funds of Knowledge", discussing how research into students' households can inform classroom practice.
Dark Funds of Knowledge, Deep Funds of Pedagogy: Exploring Boundaries Between Lifeworlds and Schools (Zipin, 2009)
In this article, Zipin celebrates the concept of Funds of Knowledge and the ways that it challenges the way "academic curriculum selectively privileges cultural capital embodied in elite social-structural positions." It then examines issues with how this concept is often applied: the "problematic tendencies to build curriculum around (1) light (i.e. positive) but not dark knowledge from learners’ lifeworlds; and (2) knowledge contents but not ways of knowing and transacting knowledge (funds of pedagogy)."
Funds of Knowledge: An Investigation of Coherence within the Literature (Hogg, 2011)
This article provides an overview and analysis of the literature on Funds of Knowledge.
Power and Agency in Education: Exploring the Pedagogical Dimensions of Funds of Knowledge (Rodriquez, 2013)
This article provides another review of the literature on Funds of Knowledge.
Supporting Mathematics Understanding Through Funds of Knowledge (Williams, Tunks, Gonzalez-Carriedo, Faulkenberry, and Middlemiss, 2016)
"The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify the unique funds of knowledge among three Hispanic families living in the same city, specifically, how parents supported their children’s mathematics learning through funds of knowledge."
Tying it All Together: Defining the Core Tenets of Funds of Knowledge (Ramos & Kiyama, 2021)
"Drawing on a synthesis of foundational and extant Funds of Knowledge (fk) scholarship that traces the framework’s theoretical origins and development, this manuscript proposes a unified corpus of six core tenets for fk, as an extension to current theoretical understandings of the framework."
Surfacing Deep Challenges for Social-Educational Justice: Putting Funds, Wealth, and Capital Frameworks into Dialogue (Neri, Zipin, Rios-Aguilar, & Huerta, 2021)
"This paper critically explores theoretical, conceptual, and methodological dimensions of three social-justice oriented educational approaches: Bourdieuian Analysis of Capital (BAC), Funds of Knowledge (FK), and Community Cultural Wealth (CCW)."
Invisible Funds of Identity in Urban Contexts (Esteban-Guitart, 2021)
"Diversity in cultures, languages and identities is a valuable resource in urban education. There is empirical evidence to support this assertion in the existing literature on funds of knowledge and funds of identity. However, the main focus of such research is on the tacit knowledge, skills, and resources that students—and their families—are explicitly aware of."
Community Funds of Knowledge and Identity: A Mesogenetic Approach to Education (Esteban-Guitart, Iglesias, Serra, & Subero, 2023)
"This theoretical article explores the concept of community funds of knowledge and identity to complement the two related notions of funds of knowledge (focused on the knowledge and skills of families) and funds of identity (students’ practices and lived experiences)."
The quest for justice in education: capital and funds of knowledge (Gaete, Luna, Silva-Pena, & Guerrero, 2023)
"This paper explores the funds of knowledge approach to pedagogy and educational research from a social justice perspective. In response to the suggestion made by some authors that the approach should be integrated with a capital perspective, we argue that this would work only if the concept of capital is understood in a certain way."
Funds of knowledge and identity in language learning and teaching (Waddington & Esteban-Guitart, 2024)
"Funds of knowledge and identity approaches emerged to combat deficit perspectives and address the achievement gap and exclusion of underrepresented students in border contexts in the late 1980s. The initial aims of such approaches find a renewed sense of purpose in the super-diverse contexts of twenty-first century societies, which compel us to rethink current approaches to language education."
Toward critical inquiry: using trauma-informed-principles to highlight teacher (mis)understanding of linguistic funds of knowledge (Schepers, Morita-Mullaney, & Sierra, 2025)
"Funds of Knowledge (FoK) is a frequent framing used in teacher education to support monolingual teachers’ understanding emergent bilinguals’s (EB) multilingual resources. Yet, without critical inquiry and interrogation, FoK can reproduce subtractive beliefs about multilingual families’ multiliteracy practices (MLP)."
Funds of Knowledge and Identity Pedagogies for Social Justice: International Perspectives and Praxis from Communities, Classrooms, and Curriculum (Esteban-Guitart, 2023)
Edited by one of the premier international voices for the funds of knowledge approach, and in particular funds of identity theory, chapters foreground first-hand, participatory, research-practice experiences with learners, schools, and local communities. These experiences demonstrate the positive, social-justice inspired pedagogical actions that result in, and reveal, powerful possibilities for a decolonialised, antiracist praxis that aims to eradicate deficit thinking in education

Additional Research and Resources

But That's Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (Ladson-Billings 1995)
This article defines and provides the theoretical basis for culturally relevant pedagogy. Originally authored in 1995, it has been served as a reference point in the development of CRE curricula (Culturally Relevant education).
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the Remix (Ladson-Billings 2014)
In this article, Ladson-Billings reflects on the history of her theory of culturally relevant pedagogy and the ways it has been used and misused since its inception.
The Theory and Practice of Culturally Relevant Education: A Synthesis of Research Across Content Areas (Aronson & Laughter 2016)
This paper synthesizes the research connecting CRE to positive student outcomes across content areas in response to the marginalization of CRE in educational reform discourses.
Gangstas, Wankstas, and Ridas: defining, developing, and supporting effective teachers in urban schools (Duncan-Andrade, 2007)
This article argues that there are five indicators of effective teaching in urban schools: Critically conscious purpose, duty, preparation, socratic sensibility, and trust.
Cultural Ways of Learning: Individual Traits or Repertoires of Practice (Gutiérrez and Rogoff 2003)
This article discusses how to characterize regularities of individuals' approaches according to their cultural background. The authors "argue against the common approach of assuming that regularities are static, and that general traits of individuals are attributable categorically to ethnic group membership" and suggest moving beyond this assumption by instead using a cultural-historical approach.
Do No Harm: Strategies for Culturally Relevant Caring in Middle Level Classrooms from the Community Experiences and Life Histories of Black Middle Level Teachers (Milton Williams, 2018)
"This qualitative study focused on the life histories of four female African-American middle level teachers. The findings illuminate how culturally responsive caring can and should be foundational to successful teaching that does not discriminate but instead uplifts every student and assures them that teachers will seek to know, understand, teach, and not degrade them."
Telling Their Side of the Story: African-American Students' Perceptions of Culturally Relevant Teaching (Howard 2001)
This article expands the literature examining students' perceptions and interpretations of these learning environments. The authors describe the results of a study that sought to assess African-American elementary students' interpretations of culturally relevant teachers within urban contexts.
What Are We Seeking to Sustain Through Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy? A Loving Critique Forward (Paris and Samy 2014)
In this article, Paris and Samy "use the emergence of Paris's concept of culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) as the foundation for a respectful and productive critique of previous formulations of asset pedagogies...[and] offer a vision that builds on the crucial work of the past toward a CSP that keeps pace with the changing lives and practices of youth of color."
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies and Our Futures (Paris, 2021)
"What does culturally sustaining pedagogy mean in the context of a global pandemic, uprisings for racial and decolonial justice, and an ongoing climate crisis? In this essay, I build from decades of strength-centered pedagogical research and practice as well as the work of contemporary organizers to engage how educators can join communities in sustaining valued lifeways through education to ensure possible futures for all peoples and lands."
Communalism Versus Race/Ethnicity: Which Predicts What Pedagogical Strategies Will Be Culturally Relevant? Or Do You Need Both?
"Research on Culturally Relevant Pedagogy claims that culture drives students’ attitudes and behaviors to determine what learning contexts best scaffold learning but operationalizes race/ethnicity. This study extends the developmental range of this work and compares race/ethnicity and self-reported group orientation as predictors."
City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row
This collection has been compiled by four of the country's most prominent urban educators. Contributors including Sandra Cisneros, Jonathan Kozol, Sapphire, and Patricia J. Williams provide some of the best writing on life in city schools and neighborhoods.

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