A Systematic Review: Competence of Teachers in Implementation of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

Abstract

Malaysia is a country with multi-race, which comprised of Malay, Chinese, Indian and so on. When it comes to education, all students from these different cultural backgrounds will be a group in the same classroom to learn and grow together. Therefore, to ensure that the pedagogy delivered is relevant to the students, a culturally responsive pedagogy should be practiced by the teachers. Culturally responsive pedagogy is a student-centered teaching approach that is sensitive to students’ cultural orientations, including students’ cultural references and getting to know students’ cultural backgrounds as well as students’ previous experiences which would affect their learning. Teachers, therefore are encouraged to learn and to apply culturally responsive pedagogy in teaching to ensure that students’ learning is responsive to their respective culture background. Objectives are as below, 1) Are the teachers competent in the implementation of culturally responsive pedagogy? 2) What hinders the implementation of culturally responsive pedagogy? On that note, a systematic literature review was carried out to gather evidence from the previous empirical studies on issues related to culturally responsive pedagogy. A total number of 15 articles were identified that met the study’s objectives. The findings through systematic review show that teachers have to improve their knowledge, understanding and self-efficacy towards culturally responsive pedagogy. Furthermore, the study found out that pedagogy that teachers used, curriculum and assessment are the issues in the implementation of culturally responsive pedagogy. Pre-service teachers should be given more training by using culturally responsive pedagogy while doing a practicum in the actual field.