Navigating Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in a High-Stakes Testing Environment: Critically Aware Teachers Committed to Transformative Education in the Classroom

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore how teachers using culturally responsive instructional practices negotiate a high-stakes testing environment (HSTE). Culturally responsive pedagogy, an asset-based approach to improving student outcomes for marginalized students of color, has been established as an effective means of closing the ‘opportunity gap.’ However, HSTEs can undermine these efforts by distorting the curriculum to focus on discrete skills development based on standardized testing. This focus can lower the expectations for student learning and disproportionality exacerbate inequitable learning conditions for traditionally marginalized students of color. In contrast, teachers who are Critically Aware work towards a transformative education using the following methods: the ongoing effort to instructionally integrate students’ cultural knowledge; teacher attention to the effects of explicit and implicit bias; the ongoing efforts to affirm students' academic and ethnic identities; and teacher heightened awareness of issues of social justice. I explored how Critically Aware teachers can navigate the demands of using culturally responsive pedagogy within a HSTE while providing a rigorous, transformative education. Findings from this study revealed two main themes. First, ambivalence for HSTEs affected the ways teachers navigated their instructional context. Second, teacher commitment to CR pedagogy protected classroom instruction from potential curriculum interruptions that arose from HSTE. Findings from this study can help identify teacher practices, models of instruction, and how teacher commitments can inform teacher training and professional development.