EDUC 2025 - Creating Culturally Responsive Classrooms

Credits: 3
Hours/Week: Lecture 3 Lab 0
Internship hours per week 0
Course Description: This course introduces pre-service teachers to the theories and approaches of culturally responsive education and the stereotypes and inequities found within diverse classroom, family, and community settings. Topics include awareness of differing perspectives around race, gender, sexual orientation, class, nationality, ability, religion, and building equitable classrooms. This course is a requirement of the Minnesota State Elementary Education Foundations Transfer Pathway and the Special Education Transfer Pathway degrees to meet the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board Standards of Effective Practice.
MnTC Goals
None

Prerequisite(s): Course placement into college-level English and Reading OR completion of ENGL 0950  with a grade of C or higher OR completion of RDNG 0940  with a grade of C or higher and qualifying English Placement Exam OR completion of RDNG 0950  with a grade of C or higher and ENGL 0090  with a grade of C or higher OR completion of ESOL 0051  with a grade of C or higher and ESOL 0052  with a grade of C or higher OR concurrent enrollment of high school students by instructor consent.
Corequisite(s): None
Recommendation: EDUC 1045 

Major Content

1. Racial Consciousness
   1. Theories of Race
   2. Definitions
   3. Pedagogical Equity
   4. Racial Disparity
   5. Racialized Groups
   6. Native/Indigenous
   7. Intersectionality
2. Professional Responsibilities
   1. Sociopolitical Context
      1. Prejudice, discrimination, racism
      2.  interpersonal, intergroup, and institutional
   2. Personal Intersectionality
      1. Explicit bias
      2. Impact
   3. Bias, perceptions, training perpetuates oppression
      1. Assess their practices
      2. Utilize tools to mitigate disrupt
3. Student Learning
   1. Asset-based mindset
      1. Relationship-building
      2. Understanding
      3. Approaches
   2. Identity formation
      1. Theories   
      2. How to develop
      3. Community building
   3. Brain Theory
      1. Construction of knowledge
      2. Cultural influences
      3. How to stimulate

1. explain authentic care by affirming, validating, and showing respect to students
2. explain an asset-based mindset.

3. practice ways to develop positive social identities.

4. describe how aligning curriculum with a student’s cultural background is necessary to make meaningful connections that enable learning.

5. describe how building community stimulates cognitive processes.

6. articulate the sociopolitical context around race and culture in K-12 education.

7. explain how intersectional identities impact experiences as an educator.

8. describe identity-based privileges.

9. reflect on one’s own biases, perceptions, and learning behaviors that perpetuate oppressive systems.

10. use tools to mitigate one’s own behavior to disrupt oppressive systems.

11. explain multiple theories of race and ethnicity including racial formation, processes of racialization, and intersectionality.

12. describe the differences between prejudice, discrimination, bias, and racism as related to education.

13. describe ways pedagogical equity is undermined.

14. identify how education is a social and cultural practice resulting in racially disparate advantages and disadvantages.

15. describe the social struggles of historically defined racialized groups.

16. describe the cultural content, world view, concepts, and perspectives of Minnesota or Wisconsin-based American Indian Tribal Nations and communities.

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