Exploring pedagogic discourses of cultural responsiveness: A tale of two classrooms

International concerns about the educational equity of ethnic minorities have continued to highlight teachers’ abilities to be culturally responsive. How do teachers manage cultural diversity through their pedagogical practices in the absence of relevant teacher training? The answer to this question is essential as it may help move our understanding of diversity education forward in societies where ethnic diversity is not necessarily the norm. Drawing from observational data in a Hong Kong multiethnic secondary school, this paper explores two teachers’ pedagogies. I interpreted the data using Bernstein’s sociology of pedagogy to identify the nature of the class activities and instructional patterns about teacher control and pacing. These pedagogical practices, I suggest, emerged from power relations that reveal teachers’ efforts in recognising their students’ ethnic diversity while negotiating academic expectations on the students to excel in Hong Kong’s competitive examination system. Copyright © 2022 Pedagogy, Culture & Society.