Developing a Culturally Relevant Pedagogy Through the Use of Diverse Literature and Perspective-Taking: A Resource Guide

There is a growing diverse population in today’s secondary schools, yet the literary canon that is taught remains extremely white. Additionally, students today are rarely challenged to step into another’s shoes to see from a different perspective. With this lack of diversity in mind, I have created a resource guide with the goal of helping in-service and pre-service teachers to develop a more culturally relevant pedagogy through the use of diverse literature in their curriculum and the incorporation of more perspective-taking activities into their lessons. This guide provides a list of diverse books, recommendations on how to teach more diverse literature instead of canonical non-diverse texts, a list of suggested perspective-taking activities, alignment with the Common Core State Standards as well as the Ohio Department of Education Strategic Plan, and an annotated bibliography. The purpose of this guide is to bring more awareness and education to culturally relevant teaching so that today’s students can begin receiving more personalized education that addresses the diversity of the 21st century