Learning Theory Article #2

Jones, Shelley. "Culturally Responsive Instruction." Leadership (2007): 14+. Web.

The article, “Culturally Responsive Instruction” by Shelley Jones overviews the teaching style of CRSBI, culturally responsive, standards based instruction. There are five components to CRSBI: Caring, Communication, Curriculum, Instruction, and Standards Based Instruction. All of these components are equally valued in the teaching-style, and this teaching style that empowers students intellectually, emotionally, socially, and politically. By using this teaching style, teachers and administrators can help to close the achievement gap that exists in America’s education system.

Caring is the simple idea of showing support and a genuine interest in the success of the students. Communication means both communication with the parents and the administration but also teaching what is proper communication to the students. Curriculum refers to the incorporation of cultural aspects. Instruction means trying pedagogies in order to accommodate to the student’s learning styles. Finally, Standards based refers to the idea of keeping instruction aligned to state or national standards.

Overall, I find this article enlightening in the fact that cultural responsive theory only contains one aspect about the culture. The other 4 elements of this are non-culturally sensitive, meaning caring or communication. So as a teacher it is just as important to be caring and have good communication as to be culturally sensitive. This can be taken to mean two things. One, since communication is very important for effective teachers, then cultural inclusion is equally as important. Second, it could mean that in order to be an effective teacher that is culturally responsive, the teacher can simply be caring and have good communication. These are things that will transcend cultural backgrounds and make them be able to connect with students of different backgrounds. Either way, it is important for teachers to implement the pedagogies of this discussed in this article in order to improve their teaching effectiveness.