A Review of Culturally Responsive Teaching for Bridging the Gap of Teaching Efforts and Performance of Culturally Diverse Learners

Abstract

Diversity of age, language, culture, norms, standards, and demographics is prevailing in educational institutions in Pakistan. The cultural diversity of learners in a classroom is the blessing of varied experiences the students bring with themselves if that can be used properly and smartly during the educational activities of students and projects of different types in the shape of assignments. For this purpose, the teacher must be competent to avail of such types of opportunities. On the other hand, the diversity of learners hurts the overall results, the reputation of management, and teachers’ performance. To deal with the cultural diversity of learners, the researcher has reviewed articles with a sample of 17 articles, theses, and reports that have presented some strategies and steps to deal with diverse learners in a classroom. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) Protocol was adopted for article selection, finalization, and data analysis with the objectives of finding out the steps required for a conducive atmosphere in ethnically diverse learning classrooms which may be helpful in the performance of the students and practices, activities that may assist a teacher in better learning outcomes in ethnically heterogeneous classrooms and to explore such strategies which may lessen the trust deficit of parents in public institutions. A period of 1995-2020 was selected. Findings were drawn through tabulation, and all objectives were met. After a detailed discussion, conclusions of the study were made. Practices, strategies, and steps were recommended for the teachers, with a discussion on the limitation of data. Future researchers were also given fields to be explored by them. The article concluded with the remarks that the teacher may respect the norms and cultures of the learners, engage learners in those activities that relate to their cultural contexts, welcome students’ families for a better understanding of the learners, and resolve school-centered problems by identifying home-centered problems.