Enacting culturally responsive pedagogy for rural schooling in Ghana: A school-community-based enquiry

Abstract

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) has become an emerging strategy for improving low-income communities’ educational outcomes. This school–community-based ethnographic case study investigates CRP strategies for improving education outcomes in a Ghanaian rural Basic School. The data collection included student assignments, focus group discussions, teachers’ reflective essays, interviews, and field observations in a Ghanaian Basic School and its community. Using CRP theorisation and Bourdieu’s socio-cultural theory, a thematic analysis of qualitative data found that the participating rural students’ aspirations and school success priorities were heavily shaped by their immediate environment, embedded cultural capital and significant social others–especially their families and teachers. Teachers’ cultural capital, including: 1) socio-cultural knowledge of their learners’ background, 2) development of local cultural competencies and 3) forging school-home collaborative cultures facilitated rural schooling success. Therefore, the study argues for a grassroots approach to teacher development and a school-community collaborative approach to learning through a greater harnessing of home cultural capital as a critical strategy for re-positioning CRP for improved education outcomes for rural children in Ghana.