Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy builds upon the Asset-Based Pedagogies that came before it but presents the need to not only affirm and connect to students’ cultural backgrounds, but also to sustain them through schooling.Django Paris and H. Samy Alim describe the key features across culturally sustaining educational settings in an Education Week Author Interview: ‘Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies’
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| Valuing community languages, practices, and ways of being | Students’ languages, literacies, and cultural ways of being are centered meaningfully and consistently in classroom learning instead of being considered as “add-ons.” |
| Schools are accountable to the community | Educators and schools are in conversation with communities about what they desire and want to sustain through schooling. |
| Curriculum that connects to cultural and linguistic histories | Educators connect present learning to the histories of racial, ethnic, and linguistic communities both locally and nationally. |
| Sustaining cultural and linguistic practices, while providing access to the dominant culture. | Educators value and sustain the cultural and linguistic practices of the community while providing access to the dominant culture (white, middle class, and standard English speaking). |