Toward a Class-Conscious Approach to Cultural Responsiveness

The last several decades have seen a growth in scholarship and application of culturally responsive and sustaining educational (CRSE) approaches in schools serving youth of color. A growing body of research has shown how CRSE serves as an effective strategy to engage students of color, combat pernicious stereotypes, and improve academic outcomes. Notwithstanding these important contributions, CRSE scholarship and practice have not fully explored the significance of social class, despite its long-standing correlation with academic performance, deep connections to identity, and relationship to race and racialization. Drawing on lessons gleaned from ethnographic research, which has demonstrated the importance of social-class analyses, this essay calls for a greater emphasis on and recognition of class in CRSE methods and application. As one of the most prominent and useful sets of pedagogical strategies used in education today, CRSE stands to benefit from a wider inclusion of social class, an addition that would have important ramifications for practitioners and scholars seeking to effectively educate historically marginalized populations. A deeper understanding of the significance of class could also help educators and scholars avoid perpetuating pernicious cultural stereotypes, such as the model minority myth and the culture of poverty. However, a class-conscious addition to CRSE must also maintain its anti-deficit perspective to avoid essentialist views about working-class youth.