Embracing and Building Culturally Responsive Practices

Individual teacher excellence can only become collective tradition when the contexts in which teachers practice and learn are able to support, sustain, and expect culturally competent practice. Culturally responsive systems require the development of individual and collective discourse and practice focused on exploring how cultural perspectives, experiences, and histories shape and divide members of the system. This article provides an approach to building culturally responsive practices that focuses on practitioners' understandings about their own roles in renewing and reforming school and classroom cultures and practices. The authors examine current trends in professional development for culturally responsive practices and suggest a systems model for creating the discourse between practitioners necessary for improving culturally responsive practices.