Culturally responsive secondary education: exploring cultural differences through existential pedagogy

Abstract

ABSTRACTAround the world, the twenty-first-century secondary classroom is based on growing cultural diversity. Educators that employ a culturally responsive curriculum with a proposed framework of existential pedagogy for secondary education seek to promote the academic success of culturally diverse learners. It is argued in this paper that in culturally responsive curriculum, existential pedagogy holistically engages the learner to critically reflect on how knowledge is constructed within cultures while exploring what it means to exist as an individual person in a diverse world. As a result, culturally diverse classrooms begin to understand the human experience in a more significant context and explore existential concerns through cultural differences. Existential pedagogy is integral for multicultural secondary educators and students to work for social justice by bridging the gaps between cultural differences.