Chapter 8: A Culturally Responsive Framework for Social Justice

A pressing challenge in education, which has been driven by and in turn continues to drive the ongoing and seemingly immutable educational disparities, can be associated with the power imbalances in classrooms and schools as a result of increasing ethnic, cultural, and language diversity disrupting the composition of the dominant mainstream. As our education systems become more culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse, rather than benefiting and learning from each other, we still expect all students to be represented within the same curriculum, pedagogy, and testing regimen, or we form separate enclaves and the divide becomes even wider. When diverse students have physical and/or learning disabilities, these situations are further exacerbated and problematized. In this chapter, the authors theorize within an alternative framework that we have termed “culturally responsive inclusion.” Based on key understandings derived from Kaupapa Māori and Freirean philosophies as delineated in Culturally Responsive Methodologies (Berryman, SooHoo, & Nevin, 2013), we encourage a framework where establishing respectful relationships of interdependence with people is central to both human dignity and praxis. A culturally responsive framework such as this challenges traditional notions of the professional expert working with objectivity; instead it opens up spaces that call for engagement through the establishment of relational and interdependent discourses.