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.