Resource Pedagogies and the Evolution of Culturally Relevant, Responsive, and Sustaining Education

Since the latter half of the 20th century, resource pedagogies have been encouraged in U.S. teacher education programs and promoted through in-service teacher professional development sessions. Resource pedagogies resist deficit perspectives by taking an asset-based perspective of cultural and linguistic difference. Asset-based perspectives differ from traditional, deficit-oriented schooling practice by viewing the rich cultural, linguistic, and literacy practices and knowledges of students from communities that have been historically marginalized by White middle-class normed policies as valuable assets. Major resource pedagogies have evolved since their emergence in response to the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Specifically, educational researchers and practitioners have advanced multicultural education, culturally relevant pedagogy, culturally responsive teaching, and culturally sustaining pedagogies to address educational inequities and narrow the opportunity gap between students from dominant communities and those that have been historically marginalized. Although numerous researchers and classroom practitioners have demonstrated the power of these asset-based pedagogies to improve student engagement and academic achievement for students from historically marginalized communities, they are still not widely incorporated in practice. Controversies around the conceptualization, conflation, and implementation of the various asset-based approaches to teaching and learning push educational researchers and practitioners to continue to refine and transform education.