Use of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in Supporting International Students: A Canadian Experience with an Online Reading-Writing Program

Breakout Room E

International students with low Academic English proficiency face great academic challenges in remote learning. The Reading and Writing Excellence (RWE) program was delivered fully online during the pandemic to meet these students’ unprecedented needs. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed to investigate the effects of the Culturally Responsive Pedagogy. Nine groups were investigated in the winter cycle 2021 at the University of Toronto in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada. In the group, where Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) was implemented, low English proficiency students wrote 11,500 words each in journal entries, the highest volume of writing output and engagement metrics as compared with their peers in all other groups. The study shows the efficacy of the CRP for supporting international students with extremely low academic English proficiency in online teaching and learning.