The Influence of Culturally Responsive Teaching on Adolescents’ Cultural Identity Formation in Kumbo Central Sub-Division
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65336/WJAEL.2026.3705Keywords:
Culturally responsive teaching, cultural identity formation, educational decolonisation, adolescents, Kumbo Central Sub-DivisionAbstract
This study examined the influence of culturally responsive teaching on adolescents’ cultural identity formation in secondary schools in Kumbo Central Sub-Division. The study was grounded on the observation that many adolescents in the area show a weak cultural identity, often reflected in poor use of their indigenous language and a growing distance from local cultural values, a pattern linked in part to teaching practices that do not sufficiently reflect learners’ own cultural realities. The study adopted a concurrent mixed methods design, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. A sample of 328 students was drawn from six secondary schools using stratified and simple random sampling, and 10 teachers and administrators were purposively selected for in depth interviews. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire and a semi structured interview guide, and analysed using descriptive statistics, simple linear regression, and thematic analysis. The findings showed that culturally responsive teaching has a statistically significant positive effect on adolescents’ cultural identity formation, accounting for 12.7% of the variance (R2 = 0.127, Beta = 0.356, p < 0.001). Descriptive results showed that teachers frequently use local examples, proverbs, and stories to support learning, and students reported feeling encouraged to take pride in their cultural background as a result. The qualitative findings supported this pattern, revealing that teachers view culturally responsive methods as an effective way to make lessons easier to understand, more participatory, and more engaging, even where the official curriculum itself remains largely unchanged. Teachers described the use of oral tradition, proverbs, and riddles as tools that sharpen students’ reasoning while reconnecting them with their cultural heritage. The study concluded that culturally responsive teaching represents a practical and immediate pathway toward educational decolonisation, one that individual teachers can pursue even in the absence of broader curriculum reform. The study recommended structured teacher training in culturally responsive methods, the development of shared cultural teaching resources, greater opportunity for students to share their own cultural knowledge in class, and the formal recognition of culturally responsive practice in teacher appraisal.
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