Igniting Student Learning Through Teacher Engagement in Culturally Relevant Pedagogy - Narrative Inquiry Spring/Summer 2018

Oct 19, 2026

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Narrative Inquiry explores Gloria Ladson-Billings’ lived experiences and how these experiences shape perspectives and theories in multicultural education. The article situates culturally relevant pedagogy within U.S. educational history, describing policy shifts and persistent inequities following segregation’s legal dismantling. It presents narrative inquiry as a qualitative methodological lens centered on biography and personal stories, enabling a holistic, embodied understanding of meaning-making over time.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages6

Reading Time15 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Narrative Inquiry

Context: Educational equity and policy shifts

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Narrative Inquiry | | | | --- | --- | --- | | Gloria Ladson-Billings
Igniting Student Learning Through Teacher Engagement
in Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Renuka Mahari de Silva, Rebecca Gleditsch, Christine Job, Shannon Jesme, Brittney Urness, & Cheryl Hunter | | | |
This article is the second in a series of narrative studies of leaders in the field of multicultural education researched and written by Cheryl Hunter and several of her graduate students atthe University of North Dakota. The first in the series appeared in the Fall 2017 issue and other articles will appear in future issues of Multicultural Education. Hunter and her students demonstrate how incorporating the personal narratives of prominent multiculturalists and practitioners with their scholarship helps us understand the depth of the scholar’s writing, the complexities of such scholarship, and the passion surrounding both their work and their lived experience. The project of narrative inquiry combines qualitative research methods, including interviews,with multicultural education, thus producing a series of biographies that offer a window into the history and development of multicultural education and its concepts. The first article in the series highlighted the work and life of Marybeth Gasman and this second installment features Gloria Ladson-Billings.
Renuka Mahari de Silva, Rebecca Gleditsch, Christine Job, Shannon Jesme, and Brittney Urness are students and Cheryl Hunter is an associate professor, all in the Department of Educational
Foundations and Research of the College of Education and Human Development
at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, North Dakota.
© 2018 by Caddo Gap Press | Introduction
For many years, the United States has espoused to the world its economic and social progressiveness. It has boasted that its freedoms are unilaterally available for its citizens. Furthermore, the U. S. preaches the gospel of globalization and the importance of competitiveness in the marketplace (Stiglitz, 2010, p. 195), which requires it to have at its core a stable, equitable, and a regenerative educational system that is sustainable, accessible to all children, and beneficial for future economic growth. However, looking more closely at U.S. educational policy, educational equity has vacillated between policies that have deeply divided the nation.
In the mid 20th century the U.S. eradicated the southern-inspired governing clause “separate but equal,” established through Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 (Sunstein, 2004, p. 102) . On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court decided through Brown v. Board of Education that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal”(2004, p. 102) .
It had been all too easy to navigate a wave of mass belief that segregation was beneficial to both Blacks and Whites, because “Negroes have not thoroughly assimilated”(Sunstein, 2004, p.102). Amidst this chaos, Brown “imposed a new normative polity”(Bell, 2004, p. 136) in America. This polity directed African Americans to buy into a new normative, that of working for pay with “implicit legal support”(Bell, 2004, p. 136) . However, lacking prior education at the same level as Whites, African Americans were too often unable to compete, or to even take advantage of this new opportunity. This further pushed Whites to declare that Blacks were unmotivated and that they failed to take advantage of“their definitionally equal status”(Bell, 2004, p. 136) . | Quite obviously, the social and political pendulum that may have begun to swing forward in addressing equality and prosperity for all, has also inmany ways swung progressively backwards. This has inevitably left the nation in a global economic flux with an inability to deliver quality education for all its young (Stiglitz, 2010, p. 343). Many of the social arrangements that are in place seem to benefit and mirror the dominant powerbase, the White majority, yet others who are of Color, spe

FAQs

What is the article’s main focus?

The article examines Gloria Ladson-Billings’ work in multicultural education through narrative inquiry, emphasizing how her lived experiences influence her perspectives and theories.

How does narrative inquiry function as a research method here?

Narrative inquiry uses personal stories and biography as the center of the study, using analysis to derive meaning from participants’ narratives over time.

What historical context does the introduction address?

It reviews U.S. educational policy and equity debates, including the legal move away from “separate but equal” and the ongoing challenges to providing quality education for all children.

Oct 19, 2026

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