Bringing together a harmony of voices: Using the Inside-Out strategy as a culturally responsive approach to intertwine knowledge from self, peer, and text

Abstract

Culturally responsive teaching is often nebulous and challenging for many to integrate in an effective and intentional way. As novice teachers, we struggled with developing tangible ways to actualize culturally responsive teaching. However, through our combined experiences and research, we have gained a better understanding of culturally responsive teaching and ways to apply the concept. We hope to support other teachers who are looking for practical tools for their culturally responsive toolbox. In this article, we introduce an instructional strategy, called InsideOut, that has benefited us within our own culturally responsive approaches. By utilizing Inside-Out, teachers can use student prior knowledge and lived experiences as resources to bridge together the multiple diversities of the classroom community. For teachers to be culturally responsive to their students, it is important that students become funds of knowledge, and their voices become an essential component to the classroom curriculum. Inside-Out supports students as funds of knowledge by merging three key sources of knowledge: self, peer, and text. Through these multiple viewpoints, our classrooms can be transformed from a predisposed silo of information to an inclusive opus full of multiple harmonies.