Reflections on culturally responsive education: Lessons from indigenous elementary schools in Taiwan

As an Associate Professor of Mathematics Education in the Elementary and Early Childhood Education department at Queens College in the United States, my students are pre-service teacher candidates who are aspiring to become elementary school teachers in New York. Most students arrive in the math methods course I teach thinking “mathematics is universal.” My time in Taiwan has provided additional direct evidence that mathematics – and most of all mathematics teaching – is not universal.

In the United States, culturally responsive education (CRE), or culturally sustaining education as it is also referred to (Paris & Alim, 2014), is typically presented as being grounded in developing three core pillars in students: their academic success, their cultural competence, and their critical consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 1995). Some states like New York have operationalized the theory into a practical framework for educators based on four principles: 1) creating a welcoming and affirming environment, 2) enacting high expectations and rigorous Instruction, 3) implementing inclusive curriculum and assessment, and 4) engaging in ongoing professional learning (New York State Education Department, 2018).

Preliminary findings from my study align with core elements of Ladson-Billings’ three pillars of culturally relevant pedagogy, while also revealing important contextual variations in how teachers in Taiwan’s indigenous schools enact CRE. First of all, my observation results validate that fostering academic success through high expectations and rigorous instruction indeed forms the foundation of how veteran teachers in Taiwan implement CRE in their math teaching. For instance, one teacher from the rural indigenous elementary school demonstrated in her interview and classroom observations the importance of both mastering the content and knowing how to adapt textbooks in a way where it is still tightly aligned with the original curriculum. After analyzing the school’s math textbook, she would modify contexts to ground mathematics in her students’ everyday lived experiences. For example, she changed a first-grade word problem about learning money in the context of a school fair – an activity that is familiar to urban students but unfamiliar to her rural students – to purchasing a souvenir or food item during their class field trip to an urban aquarium. However, she never veers too far away from the traditional math content so that her students may still succeed on future high stakes tests. Notably, when she encounters parents who do not prioritize test performance or buy into a lower passing score or threshold for indigenous children, this teacher actively communicates the high academic expectations she has of all her children. She works to either cultivate a shared school-and-family commitment to attaining academic excellence in math (not just in the culturally affirming areas of sports, music and art), or at least to secure family buy-in that she will be persistently pushing their children to achieve.

Secondly, my data substantiate the CRE principle of developing and sustaining students’ cultural competence through inclusive curricula and environments. Specifically, interviews and observations reveal that teachers implement CRE to sustain – and at times resurrect – indigenous culture and traditions that are slowly being erased or have already been lost. Teachers are motivated by imparting and passing on indigenous culture, such as their language, cultural attire, and activities like weaving or hunting. This is particularly important because many of the students’ parents have themselves “modernized” and no longer carry on or may not even be aware of indigenous traditions. For example, one teacher interview even revealed that the school principal often now plays the role of giving indigenous names to students whose parents no longer give them a tribal name.  

Finally, many teachers in the United States associate CRE with teaching social justice and achieving equity. However, preliminary survey findings from indigenous elementary school teachers across Taiwan suggest that CRE is implemented not with equity as a stated goal. Interview and observation data further validate that teachers by and large elide sociopolitical consciousness in their reasons for and manners of implementing CRE. Their interest in and motivation to implement CRE seem to align with sustaining indigenous culture rather than addressing historical inequities or issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion – reasons why many critics in the United States accuse liberal educators of political indoctrination or being “woke.” One Atayal culture teacher shared in her interview that where they do teach historical accounts of social injustices in the culture class, it is always taught in a way that balances the “ugly” stories of colonialism with perspectives of how colonizers have also helped indigenous society. Such an approach, as she continued, lends itself to teaching other values like forgiveness that are central in their ancestral moral code and belief system called “gaga.”