Why is Culturally Responsive Classroom Management Important?

Culturally responsive classroom management (CRCM) is an imperative concept student teachers must master or at least begin to understand by the time they enter the classroom.  In our elementary and secondary schools, more than one third of students are children of color, one fifth of the students live in poverty, and almost one tenth of them are LEP (Limited English Proficiency) students (Weinstein, Tomlinson-Clarke, & Curran, 2004).  “In sharp contrast, our teaching force remains overwhelmingly White, middle class, and monolingual English (Ladson-Billings, 2001),” (Weinstein et al., 2004). 

Without understanding where our students are coming from culturally, the already difficult task of classroom management will become exacerbated.  When teachers come from a different background than their students, it is more likely that they will see more conflicts and differences in expectations of appropriate behavior, (Weinstein et al., 2004).  According to Weinstein et al. (2004), there are five components essential to CRCM:

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• Recognition of one’s own ethnocentrism and biases

• Knowledge of students’ cultural background

• Understanding of the broader social, economic, and political context of our educational system

• Ability and willingness to use culturally appropriate classroom management strategies

• Commitment to building caring classroom communities

In order to become culturally responsive classroom managers, we must recognize our own biases and values.  The sooner we can recognize these, the sooner we will realize how they shape our behavior expectations and daily interactions with our students.  “[Culturally responsive classroom managers] recognize that the ultimate goal of classroom management is not to achieve compliance or control but to provide all students with equitable opportunities for learning…They understand that CRCM is classroom management in the service of social justice,” (Weinstein et al., 2004).  

Part of managing a productive classroom environment with an ethnically diverse population of students is to create a safe classroom climate which will, in turn, help our students develop awareness of ethnocentrism.  We must also realize, and portray to our students, that “the categories by which we classify people are constantly evolving, overlapping, mixing—even opposing each other (Scholl, 2001).  Identity is not a ‘fixed essence lying unchanged outside history and culture’ (Hall 1989, p.72); rather, identity construction is an ongoing, lifelong process,” (Weinstein et al., 2004).

Because social identity is so fluid, we must also understand the links between power and differences in race, social class, gender, language background, and sexual orientation.  The varied practices of school (e.g. rigid tracking, unevenly distributed resources, standardized testing) can single out groups of students and make them feel superior while unintentionally demeaning or separating others (Weinstein et al., 2004).  Another way some students are being profiled by gender or race is to examine the ways that “current practices and policies may reinforce institutional discrimination,” (Weinstein et al., 2004).  This can be determined by realizing which children are being disciplined most often.  Once we recognize this, we can determine which behaviors we regard as needing disciplinary action.

In sum, we can reflect on the ways our specific classroom management strategies promote or obstruct equal access to learning.  This requires awareness of assumptions we may take for granted, knowledge of our students’ cultural backgrounds, and understanding of the broader context (Weinstein et al., 2004).  “This is an ongoing, possibly uncomfortable process, in which cultural diversity becomes a lens through which we view the tasks of classroom management,” (Weinstein et al., 2004).

Weinstein, Carol S., Tomlinson-Clarke, Saundra, & Curran, Mary (2004). Toward a Conception of Culturally Responsive Classroom Management. Journal of Teacher Education, 55(1), 25-38.