Cultural Competency

In October 2008 CSTP convened a group of practioners, who are experts on cultural competence, to create a set of resources designed to help teachers reflect on their practice and take practical, effective steps for improving their ability to reach all students.  Because new teachers, Professional Certification candidates and National Board candidates all have to address cultural competency as an area of proficiency, the planning group identified these groups as their audience although other teachers can also use these resources to inform their thinking and refine strategies. 

The group adapted NWREL's list of cultural competency traits (identified from the literature on this topic) and added the additional trait of teacher awareness to produce seven indicators for implementing cultural proficiency. 

The group used these seven traits to create two resources teachers can use in their classrooms: 

• 1. Culturally Responsive Classroom Descriptors - identifies what these seven culturally responsive indicators look like in a classroom
• 2. Culturally Responsive Lesson Plan Descriptors - identifies what the indicators look like in a lesson plan

Culturally Responsive Resources (a third resource) is a list of literature and other resources that educators can use to improve their cultural proficiency.  Each resource has an explanation of its usefulness.  The materials are descriptive rather than prescriptive so that educators can use them to improve how they integrate cultural proficiency into their everyday classroom routines.

Definitions that we used:

Culture is inclusive of a variety of aspects related not only to race/ethnicity, but also gender, national origin, language, religion, physical developmental ability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status or class, geography, as well as others (Schillinger, 2008).

Cultural competence is the integration and transformation of knowledge about self-awareness and the awareness and respect of cultural differences of groups of people into specific standards policies, practices, relationships, and attitudes used in various cultural settings to increase the quality of teaching and relationships (the group's modification of Davis' definition, 1997).