Culturally Relevant Curriculum Materials in the Age of Social Media and Curation

Abstract

Social media and other virtual resource pools (VRPs) have emerged as spaces wherein teachers can connect with other educators and acquire curriculum materials. Though teachers actively engage online, seeking and accessing alternative curriculum materials, little is known about how these efforts may impact culturally relevant education for students with diverse languages, literacies, and cultural practices in the classrooms. Situated in Ladson-Billings's work on culturally relevant pedagogy, this chapter outlines a framework for selecting and evaluating culturally relevant curriculum materials and applies it in a prominent virtual space: Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT). We find that there is a lack of opportunity for deep engagement in culturally relevant education as evidenced in resources found on TpT. This finding suggests unique challenges as well as opportunities for educators and researchers to leverage resources and knowledge from the cloud to the classroom. We conclude with a discussion of these challenges and opportunities from the perspectives of four groups of actors: (1) the creators and curators of curriculum materials, (2) the prosumers who proactively seek out resources and leverage VRPs, (3) the educators who commit to preparing or guiding teachers using VRPs, and (4) the researchers who study the virtual space for education quality and equity.