Ecological Learning Environment for all

#wellbeing #equity #learning #all #students #culturally #responsive #pedagogy #equity #inclusion #achievement

How can culturally responsive pedagogy and assessment practices be used to support equity, inclusion, well-being, and achievement for all students?

By Sharon

The definition: Culturally Responsive and Relevant Pedagogy 
The Ontario Ministry of Education defines Culturally Responsive and RelevantPedagogy (CRRP) as an inclusive approach to education where all students see themselves reflected in the curriculum, their physical surroundings, and the broader environment. All students learn differently and these differences may be connected to background, language, family structure, and social or cultural identity.Culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2010)

Strategies
-Positive feedback environment
-Using rich cultural evidence to inclusive 
-Assistive tools to support learning difficulties 
-Growth mindset sharing with students' parents 
-Teachers’ differentiated instruction and responsive assessment

Why ecological ethics "care, trust,integrity, respect" are the key answers to implement CRRP, and assessment to support all students?

How can educators create an ecological learning environment?

Teachers' culturally responsive and relevant pedagogy is based on creating an equitable, inclusive learning environment to meet different students' backgrounds and respecting students' integrity for all students learning success.

There are various strategies of teachers' practices in assessment and culturally responsive pedagogy to make inclusive, equitable, welling, achievement by meeting teacher's ecological ethics.

First, to make a respectful learning environment, teachers can create a positive feedback culture using the FNMI lens for students to have ecological awareness. Students will be more motivated by caring, supportive, respectful feedback culture. To do this, the teacher can prepare an "ongoing ecological restorative circle group" named care, trust, integrity, and respect to cultivate healthy relationships in the activity. Second, teachers can bring rich cultural evidence of all students' different cultures to make a trustful relationship between students and the teacher. In the activity of sharing students' stories, teachers can help students to bring their cultural assets to introduce their own cultural background. Students will be more engaged to welcome their dignity, and teachers can promote students' achievement by increasing students' self-efficacy in the interactive process. Third, to reduce the inequity in the learning environment by increasing teachers' reliability, teachers can choose assistive tools and small foodbank with promoting a growth mindset in the assessment. Educators can arrange various useful learning assistive tools, and manipulatives in comfortable spaces to reduce the learning gap. Lastly, in terms of meeting teachers' ethical care, teachers can give short guidelines about self-care, a growth mindset, and positive discipline to nurture well-being and an equitable learning environment. The teacher can distribute communication books about students' resilience to parents with emotional caring. To implements all ecological ethics through culturally responsive and relevant teachers' practice for the assessment, educators give different difficulty levels of assessment sheets in an activity to increase intrinsic motivation about their achievable expectations. To encourage students' deeper learning, teachers can prepare conferences to speak up about their voices about the social justice lesson. Teachers can help students have more affirmation of their learning and promote their next learning by preparing for effective questions in discourse, and discussion activities.