Developing a Culturally Inclusive Curriculum

These materials aim to: develop an understanding of how the culturally relevant curriculum is beneficial to all pupilssuggest ways to build on the language and cultural assets pupils bring from their home and community experience to strengthen learning.

Explore how the curriculum can reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity of societyencourage the use of a diverse range of texts and texts types that across a year of teaching will represent all aspects of pupils’ cultures, faiths, sexuality, diverse families etc. so that they will recognise themselves in the texts, learn empathetically about each other and will feel safe to bring their own stories into the classroom suggest ways of adapting planning, teaching and learning to be inclusive for pupils who are learning English as an additional language or pupils from Minority Ethnic groups.

Explore how a culturally diverse approach to teaching can raise achievement. In developing a culturally inclusive curriculum, nobody is expected to be the expert. Teachers, trainees, pupils and communities can draw on one another’s experience and expertise and create a curriculum that represents everyone’s stories, rather than just the story of the dominant few. By opening up thinking and moving away from a Eurocentric curriculum, teachers can explore intercultural perspectives with pupils, developing young people’s active interest in the world and their relationships to it.

UKLA is grateful to the London Borough of Newham and Mishti Chatterji of Mantra Lingua Press for permission to reproduce parts of the book Developing a Culturally Inclusive Curriculum (2008).