Cultivating Cultural Humility in Education
In pursuit of equality, it is critically important for educators to be culturally aware and to implement culturally inclusive strategies that can help close the achievement gaps that are affecting the diverse demographics within the school system. Thus, teachers and administrators are tasked with creating innovative ways to be inclusive of the diverse languages, values, and backgrounds that come with teaching children from a variety of cultures.
Cultural humility, described as a dispositional trait, takes an other-oriented stance (open to the “other”) when interacting with persons from a different cultural background. Additionally, cultural humility lacks the superiority complex evident when an individual interprets their own cultural values as more meaningful and worthwhile than the values of others. Rather than concentrating solely on knowledge of another person’s cultural background, cultural humility proposes openness and humility when engaging with individuals from a cultural background different from our own.