“It’s Not Intentional”: Contradictions in Culturally Responsive Teaching

Abstract

Culturally responsive instruction scholarship often presents a binary standard that teachers either satisfy or do not, a determination largely based on perceptions of observed practice. Yet, conclusions about teachers’ cultural responsiveness are dubious when researchers do not account for teachers’ intent. Conceptualizing cultural responsiveness as a continuum of dispositions, knowledges, and skills, this study asks: are certain culturally responsive characteristics more easily embodied and acted upon than others, and what accounts for these incongruences? Drawing on five months of data collection, this case study follows Margaret, a decorated English language arts teacher, and uncovers her culturally responsive characteristics based on her articulated instructional intent. Analysis reveals that Margaret more readily embodied and enacted certain culturally responsive characteristics than others. Although she worked to promote student success and create a classroom environment embracing all students, Margaret insisted her provocative pedagogical choices–such as melding conversations of canonical literature with patriarchal critique–were not intended to foster students’ sociopolitical consciousness or reflect her commitment to modifying curricula for equity. Tensions between Margaret’s culturally responsive characteristics lie in her belief that “good” teachers assume ideological neutrality. Margaret’s case asks stakeholders to centralize teachers’ instructional intent and, in doing so, complicate culturally responsive teaching.