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In this article, Ladson-Billings reflects on the history of her theory of culturally relevant pedagogy and the ways it has been used and misused since its inception. She argues for the importance of dynamic scholarship and suggests that it is time for a "remix" of her original theory: culturally sustaining pedagogy, as proposed by Paris (2012). Ladson-Billings discusses her work with the hip-hop and spoken word program First Wave as an example of how culturally sustaining pedagogy allows for a fluid understanding of culture, and a teaching practice that explicitly engages questions of equity and justice. Influenced by her experience with the First Wave program, Ladson-Billings welcomes the burgeoning literature on culturally sustaining pedagogy as a way to push forward her original goals of engaging critically in the cultural landscapes of classrooms and teacher education programs.
Almost twenty-five years ago, I attempted to make a pedagogical change (Ladson-Billings, 1990). Instead of asking what was wrong with African American learners, I dared to ask what was right with these students and what happened in the classrooms of teachers who seemed to experience pedagogical success with them. Pursuit of this question has helped define much of my scholarly career. My work in this area resulted in the development of what I termed culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995). When I began this inquiry, I was primarily concerned with practical ways to improve teacher education in order to produce new generations of teachers who would bring an appreciation of their students' assets to their work in urban classrooms populated with African American students. Through this study, I came to focus on eight teachers who I found to be thoughtful, inspiring, demanding, critical; they were connected to the students, their families, their communities, and their daily lives (Ladson-Billings, 1994). The way these teachers thought and spoke about their practice allowed me to discover the underlying structure of their work and describe it in ways that became useful for other teachers in a variety of settings. I identified three major domains of their work: academic success, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness. Briefly, by academic success I refer to the intellectual growth that students experience as a result of classroom instruction and learning experiences. Cultural competence refers to the ability to...