Cultural Contextuality

Cultural contextuality consists of the values, symbols, interpretations, and perspectives that are shared by a particular group. Understanding the learner's cultural contextuality is a critical step in designing curricula and learning activities that are both effective and relevant to students' lived experiences. Attending to cultural contextuality in the [Page 512]creation of curricula, pedagogies, and programs prevents educators from returning to deficit models of education that blamed students and their families for the failure of schools to educate all children. This entry reviews the historical context for cultural contextuality in education and its value for teaching and learning.

Before the mid-1960s, the value of cultural contextuality for all learners was not considered by most leading educational theorists or practitioners. Most educators believed that middle-class White students possessed the appropriate cultural positioning for scholastic success by virtue of their class status. Students of color and low-income White students were perceived as culturally deprived, which resulted in their poor scholastic achievement. Compensatory or deficit models of education were promoted to prepare teachers for educating culturally deprived children.

In response to the cultural deprivation theorists, educational theorists and researchers such as Geneva Gay and Gloria Ladson-Billings provided the counterargument that children of color and low-income White children were not culturally deprived but culturally different. They argued that culturally different children came from rich cultures that were different from, and clashed with, the culture of the schools. The learning styles and value systems of these children were substantively different from the learning styles and values that were expected and rewarded in schools. Rather than focus on the aspects of White middle-class culture that some children lacked, cultural difference theorists recommended incorporating the cultures of children of color and low-income Whites into school curricula and pedagogies.

Pedagogies that acknowledge the multiplicity of cultural contextualities promote the proliferation of asset models of education, which recognize the value of culture to enhance learning, and focus on the tools that students from all cultural contexts bring to the teaching–learning process. Embedded macro, national, primordial, and, for some individuals, adopted cultures influence all interpersonal interactions and have particular implications for informing and guiding teachers' instructional designs, as well as their curricular and pedagogical decisions.

The embedded cultural realities in which students live and learn provide educators with both the opportunity and the responsibility to educate themselves regarding the histories, values, symbols, and perspectives that comprise students' cultural contexts. The combination of curricula, pedagogy, and programs that are consistent with students' cultures helps engage students and sustain their engagement in all phases of their educational experience. Among the resources to investigate for cultural contextuality are students, their families, cultural centers, texts, and culturally specific media.