Extending theories of culturally responsive pedagogy: Urban Catholic schools and immigrant communities

Abstract

This dissertation explores the intersection of culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP), Catholic schooling, and immigrant education. Theories of CRP emerged in the 1990s in response to demographic changes that brought the educational concerns of cultural and language minority students to the forefront. Culture-centered education, however, is not a new phenomenon; Catholic schools, for example, originated as culturally responsive institutions for 19th-century immigrants. Today, more than two million students attend more than 7,000 Catholic schools in the United States, many of them cultural minorities or children of immigrants. This research focuses on one of those Catholic schools in Chicago that has served immigrant communities for more than a century. This qualitative research study contributes to theories of CRP in two distinct ways. First, this research extends theories of CRP to consider religion, a dimension of student culture that has largely been overlooked in the literature. In particular, this dissertation demonstrates how religious belief, identity, and practice can inflect cultural competence. Second, this research points to tensions that emerge when teachers seek to foster sociopolitical consciousness, an important tenet of CRP, in the Catholic school context. As a result, this dissertation complicates the notion of forming sociopolitical consciousness as a dimension of CRP and it builds on theories of CRP to theorize a form of culturally responsive pedagogy possible in the Catholic school context. Through archival research, this project places theories of CRP into historical context, identifying the historical qualities and practices of Catholic schooling that resonate with contemporary theories of culturally responsive education. Through ethnographic observations and interviews, this project identifies the qualities and practices of a contemporary Catholic school that reflect cultural responsiveness. In particular, this study describes how religious connections between the home and school facilitate cultural competence and how teachers in Catholic schools might struggle to foster a sociopolitical consciousness in students. This study also contributes to the field of school leadership in Catholic education. By pointing toward features of culturally responsive pedagogy that are particularly well-suited to the Catholic school context, this dissertation suggests ways to enhance the education offered in urban Catholic schools serving immigrant communities.