1.

0 INTRODUCTION
Preparing for Culturally Responsive Teaching was an article by Genera Gay
(2001) from University of Washington, Seattle. This article publish in his recent
book entitle Culturally Responsive Teaching.
In this article, the author focussed on elevating the school success of
ethnically diverse students through culturally responsive teaching and to prepare
preservice teacher in education programs with the knowledge, understanding,
methods, attitudes and skills to achieve the focussed area. For me, this article is
really important since in education, it involve variety of culture where the
students actually comes from different background and each of the culture may
bring specific style in their learning process. So, teachers who are actually have
direct implication for teaching and learning need to know the ways to deliver the
contents, understanding the cultural diversity that exist between the students or
in other words to prepare effective cultural teaching to meet and elevate the
school success.
2.0 SUMMARY
In this article, the author focussed on teachers who need to prepare an
effective teaching method for culturally diverse students in school. In order to
investigate this specific approach to effective teaching for multicultural students,
the author had done the research findings, theoretical claims, practical
experiences and personal stories of educators researched and worked with low
scorer African, Asian, Latino and Native American scholars. These data were
collected from individuals from wide range of disciplinary backgrounds. There
were five vital components of culturally responsive teaching examined. Firstly,
develop a knowledge basis about cultural diversity, designing culturally relevant
curricula for the second element, demonstrating cultural caring and build a
learning community, teachers communicate with students from diverse ethnic
and respond to ethnic diversity in delivery instruction.
The first element that being examined is developing a cultural diversity
knowledge where teachers need to be prepared by having knowledge about their
students cultural variation. First of all, teachers need to understand the cultural
characteristic and contribution of different ethnic groups. For instance their ethnic
groups cultural values, traditions, communication, their learning style,
contribution and relational patterns. According to Geneva, in order to produce
culturally effective teaching, teachers need to identify detail information about
the particular culture of the ethnic group. They need to have sufficient
information and facts about particular culture and do should not simply shallow
the information taken from any sources without investigate the validity of the
information for example mass media.
Geneva (2001) states that teacher need to be creative by designing the
culturally relevant curriculum and instruction that resemble the cultural diversity
and ethnic of students. Actually, the existing curriculum that provide chances for
teaching cultural variety is the formal plan governed by the education system

which is the textbooks. The textbook improved over time to suit the cultural
diversity, but still give unfavourable result. So, teachers actually play an
important role on how to be creative and make any changes on the curriculum
design and instructional materials to suit with the learning style of multicultural
students.
Next, the third element of culturally responsive teaching is demonstrating
cultural caring and building a learning community where students need to use
their own culture and practices to develop their intelligent and educational
success. This can be done by preparing a classroom environment that are
favourable for diversity scholars to learn. Cultural caring can be done by teachers
where they need to put much attention and care about cultural diversity in
classroom and put on effort thoroughly in order to elevate their students success
in academic. It requires teachers to think strategically and use their
understanding on how to perform in the best interest of the students. While, for
building a learning community among diverse learner a group role like mutual
aid society is used which all the participants need to participate and responsible
for aiding each other to perform a certain task ( Geneva,2001). According to
Escalante and Dirmann (1990), this group role showed the encouraging result
where the students success have been confirmed in high school mathematics for
Latinos.
The fourth element that been highlighted is cross cultural communication.
Montagu and Watson (1979) states that communication is the ground of meeting
and the basis of community where this help determine success level of students
and often well-designed on how good the teachers interact with them. One of
the specific component of communicating style is the protocol of participants in
discourse. This specific component determine whether students get involve in the
education or not. For instance, the communicating style of most ethnic colour in
the United States are more favourable, where students are able to participate in
the learning process where teacher give permission for students to engage with
them by asking questions, giving their opinion and teachers give feedback to
them.
The last element to culturally responsive teaching is cultural congruity in
classroom instruction. This can be implemented by constructing instruction to fit
with the ethnically diverse students. According to Geneva (2001), the significant
way to established cultural congruity in teaching is integrating ethnic and cultural
diversity into high-status school subjects for example math, science, reading and
writing. Teachers should learn how to multiculturalize these according to formal
and informal instruction.
CRITIQUES
The preparing for culturally responsive teaching article by Geneva Gay is
actually very useful especially for preservice teacher like me where I need to
understand and have knowledge about the cultural diversity that exist in school.
Every culture that exist in school actually have different style or language that
teacher need to know the way on how to tackle them by concerning about their

culture base. This is because, the learning process will be more effective when
students are taught through their own culture and life experiences. I can see that
the author give brief explanation about the subject being discussed when he
provide many example of the way to prepare for culturally responsive teaching
which some of the ways I can used when teaching multicultural students. The
author also provide trustworthy information and credible points of view where he
gave two difference situation and compare both of it.
But, there are some limitation in this article in the form of language that
he used. For me, he uses such complicated term of words and sentences which
made some readers hard to understand. In addition, this article is based on the
research finding from the variety of background from Latino, African, Asian and
Native American Students so some example that he provided may be differ from
the real situation that happen in Malaysia. Malaysia education are centralized
where teachers cannot simply change the learning style that already stated in
the education policies. Contradict with the decentralized education that being
implemented in certain oversea countries for example United State, the teachers
or schools have their power to change their school policies in order to fit into the
culturally responsive teaching.
In addition, I actually disagree that we cannot only focus on the teachers
teaching only in elevate school success but we need to consider the students
ethnic behaviour. That mean, in order to improve school success, both students
and teachers need to play their role. Based on Journal of Praxis in Multicultural
Education written by Elaine and Rendall (2010), eventhough the teacher has
provide good cultural congruity in classroom instruction, some of the students
have the behavioural problem may disrupt teaching and learning process in
classroom since they do not have any interest in learning. As we can see in
Malaysia, the Chinese students are more likely to have more interest in learning
as compared to Malay students. So, the students themselves need to have
awareness about their cultural differences by trying to compare their good habit
between the culture and try to follow the good cultural habit in order to improve
their success. This can be done by the students understand and have knowledge
about the culture exist between them.
Based on the five essential elements that the author examine, I totally
agree that teachers need to develop knowledge base about the cultural diversity
of students. This basis is important since teachers may have insight about the
students cultural background and teachers will learn to value every culture of the
students and for sure racism will be avoided. According to Villegas and Lucas
(2000) in their journal preparing culturally responsive teacher, teacher need to
discover the numerous cultural and social group including race, sexual
characteristics, ethnic, social class and language. Teachers consciousness about
knowledge of variety type of culture may produce a favourable environment of
learning hence improving the school succeed.
Next, I also agree with the element where teachers communicate by
ethnically diverse students by giving the students opportunity to involve in the
learning process. This can be done by the students give responds and feedback

also asking question or giving opinion about what topic they are discussing. This
element can develop a well interaction between students and teachers thus
providing a conducive environment in learning process.
Lastly, I am actually agree with all the essential elements that being
examined since it provide clear explanation for preparing cultural responsive
teaching. So, I totally agreed with all the five points that the author stated. This
is because in order to prepare for culturally responsive teaching, all the points are
very important in determining the school success.
CONCLUSION
In the nutshell, this article on preparing for culturing responsive teaching is
very favourable in helping teachers to attract attention of multicultural students
to learn and at the same time will improve the school success. This article will be
very useful for teachers especially preservice teachers where they can make this
article as a guideline for them to teach diverse cultural students. But, for my
opinion, this article will be more useful if it also focussed on the students because
students also plays an important role to improve the school success. Even
though the teachers have prepare variety of ways to teach multicultural students,
but the students themselves do not have any awareness about the cultural
diversity, the learning process still unfavourable. So, we need the cooperation
between teachers and students in order to improve the school success.