Culturally Responsive Teaching Checklist
Implementing Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices: Checklist
Instruction
- Develop a positionality and/or diversity statement that reflects your identity as an instructor, your connection to the Traditional Territory, and your experiences when you were a student.
- Add a Territorial Acknowledgement
- Welcome and encourage students to introduce themselves and possibly their backgrounds (optional) connecting to their expectations for the course or the libraries.
- Co-create group agreements with students to make the classroom a safer and brave space.
- Establish a welcoming and respectful platform for open dialogue encouraging students to share their unique cultural experiences and viewpoints. Consider using your own background story as an engaging ice breaker in class.
- Ensure that course materials, including assignment criteria and library resources that represent diverse voices and perspectives by incorporating readings, examples, and case studies from a wide array of cultural backgrounds that go beyond peer-reviewed and academic titles.
- Develop student awareness and understanding of cultural diversity by encouraging them to explore topics related to their own cultural backgrounds.
- For library instruction sessions, engage with instructors about the diverse student demographics in their classes. This includes international and domestic students, as well as individuals from various cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
- In instruction sessions, refrain from using slang, idioms, or examples that are solely focused on European and North American contexts.
- Utilize various teaching methods, including active learning and flipped classrooms, to address different learning styles.
- Consider presenting academic practices positively, highlighting the significance of academic integrity and providing guidance on proper paraphrasing and citation techniques, rather than adopting a punitive approach. For example, consider consulting the following guides Camosun Indigenizing Citation guide and Citation and Research Justice guide
- Re-evaluate the conventional one-shot library instruction model and collaborate with instructors to explore alternative methods for delivering information literacy content, ensuring it meets the needs of experiential learning in a sustainable manner.
- Ensure students are informed in advance if a subject is sensitive, giving them the option and time to disengage if needed. It is important to address this in classrooms, ensuring instructors set up and prepare students for the work required to confront systemic racism and bias. Efforts should be made to avoid content that could provoke racial distress, cause harm, or show insensitivity towards any particular culture.
- In a conventional lecture-style classroom, consider being mindful of your engagement and body presence, as it can have a significant impact on conveying authority.
Services
- Reflect on and test for your cultural biases, respect cultural differences, avoid making assumptions, and intentionally seek to understand the viewpoints and perspectives of students from diverse backgrounds.
- Address all incidents of bias, racial tensions or discrimination promptly and sensitively in the classroom and library.
- Be mindful when discussing content with racial histories or potential trauma, recognizing its impact on students’ socio-political and cultural traditions, and offer flexibility to accommodate their diverse experiences.
- Reflect on interactions with learners from diverse cultural backgrounds that may have been challenging, and prioritize enhancing cultural fluency to deepen understanding of racial and cultural diversity.
- In a library setting, instead of asking about students’ cultural background, culture, or country of origin, shift the focus toward their previous library experiences, utilizing questions such as, “Are you familiar with citation styles or how to cite a resource?” or “Have you participated in a library instruction session before?” or “have you used an academic library in the past?”
- Consider presenting library policies positively, rather than adopting a punitive approach.
- When offering directional guidance, accompany students to their destination in the library if comfortable, or provide clear and detailed directions, sometimes written as well.
Collections
- Highlight resources in multiple languages by offering library guides with language-selection options, employing linguistically diverse content including videos, and avoiding subject discipline (and library) jargon.
- Enhance the discoverability of the present library digital collections including commercial databases and library-created collections and provide online guidelines and instructions of using these collections.
- Review and annotate resources in your libGuides and course guides from a decolonization, anti-racism, and cultural competency perspective.
- As a liaison librarian go beyond standard introductions to databases and provide historical context, perspectives, diversity limitations, and alternative viewpoints about the collections.
- Considering the emerging information literacy areas such as media literacy, algorithmic literacy and data literacy, etc., collaborate with faculty members to redesign the assignment related to source evaluation.
- Invite students to suggest supplementary course readings and additional resources to enhance their understanding of course topics and foster a sense of ownership and contribution, while intuitively initiating discussions on evaluating diverse sources.
- Acknowledge the difficulty in finding diverse perspectives due to historical or other reasons, and encourage students to critically analyze existing sources.
- Reflect, self-educate and discuss in the library and on campus about the library’s role of collecting, preserving and mobilizing marginalized knowledge and voices in the local communities and larger society.
Implementing Cultural Humility and Cultural Competency: Checklist
- Develop an understanding and cultural awareness of your personal values and beliefs.
- Continue to develop cross-cultural or interpersonal skills regarding traditional norms, beliefs, and historical contexts of diverse cultures.
- Identify cultural holidays impacting the curriculum and adjust the course structure accordingly during the term.
- Implement policies enabling students to access material relevant to their linguistic and sociopolitical diversity.
- Offer alternative learning methods or use language enabling linguistically diverse students, especially those not proficient in English, to understand the subject matter.
- Incorporate readings and research reflecting diverse perspectives and cultural backgrounds of students; review course content for inclusivity.
- Provide real-life examples from yourself or others in your unit who have faced similar challenges as students.
- Use inclusive language when assisting students in research and information retrieval.
- Inform students if unfamiliar with the socio-political context of their country of origin, offering them the option to leave the classroom if necessary.
- Use inclusive language to develop course curriculum that respects and values students’ diverse identities and backgrounds.
- Adapt teaching strategies to diverse learning preferences and cultural preferences, integrating active learning techniques for engagement.
- Create assessments or assignments that are culturally sensitive and provide alternative assessment methods to accommodate diverse cultural perspectives and experiences.
- Include a respective classroom environment policy that is welcoming and inclusive for all students, regardless of their cultural background
- Encourage open dialogue in your classroom or services that ensure respect for diverse viewpoints.