NADIA PROKOPCHUK

University of Saskatchewan

Moving Beyond Multicultural Education to Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

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Following adoption of Canada’s policy of multiculturalism in 1971, provincial ministries of education developed protocols to recognize and promote multiculturalism. In Saskatchewan, two companion documents were produced for Multicultural Education and Heritage Language Education (1994). Despite good intentions among educators, multiculturalism became a superficial add-on, in which students were either invited to share visible symbols of their heritage with classmates or display their talents during multicultural events or heritage fairs. Gloria Ladson-Billings (1994) called this the ‘heroes and holidays’ approach to recognition of diverse learners in schools. The approach diminished linguistic and cultural identity to foods, festivals, symbols, folklore, and national heroes. Multilingual skills among students received little or no recognition in mainstream education. Early (2008) stated that “Because the education of children is a provincial responsibility, no federal funding is available for language programs for children who enter school speaking a nonofficial language if they are educated in the dominant official language of their province…” (p. 198). In essence, the multiculturalism policy spawned a separation of language and culture, making schools monolingual zones (Cummins, 2007) which promoted a pervading view that home languages were detrimental to English language progress. Culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) holds the promise of removing the separation between culture and language in schools. This action-oriented pedagogy goes beyond the heroes and holidays approach. As defined by Gay (2010), CRP requires classroom teachers to consider each student’s background knowledge and cultural identity during the learning process. Prior home and community experiences become a welcome addition to lesson plans and instruction. Diverse cultures and values are represented in classroom resources, texts, assignments, discussions, or projects. Students’ first languages can be used as tools to support English language learning and conceptual understanding of subject matter. This presentation suggests that the time has come for a movement toward culturally responsive pedagogy in Canadian schools.

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Nadia Prokopchuk began her career in 1979 as a K-12 teacher in the Ukrainian-English bilingual program in Saskatoon. As no curriculum documents had been written for bilingual education, Nadia took on the additional task of being a curriculum writer with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. This work was followed by several administrative roles within the school division as a language consultant, public relations coordinator, and Assistant to the Director of Education. In 2000, Nadia left Saskatoon Catholic Schools for a position with the Ministry of Education as provincial language consultant and later Senior Program Manager for EAL and languages, a position she held until retirement in 2016. Always eager to gain new knowledge and skills, Nadia accepted a role with the College of Education to design an EAL certificate program and courses for teachers wishing to become EAL teaching specialists. Nadia enjoys her work as an instructor at the university while pursuing long-term research interests in the areas of effective language education, EAL teacher education and use of the Common Framework of Reference (CFR) as a comprehensive language reference tool.