Culturally Responsive Teaching as a Method for Teaching Students With Emotional/Behavioral Disorders in the Music Classroom

As students with special needs become increasingly mainstreamed into music classes, there is a demand for strategies to help teachers meet these students’ needs. The purpose of this review of literature was to review and synthesize the literature focused on teaching students with an emotional/behavioral disorder (EBD) in the music classroom and to explore the possibility of culturally responsive teaching (CRT) being a method of engaging students with EBDs. Using targeted database searches, I reviewed the literature on the topic of culturally relevant teaching and synthesized the results into the following categories: (a) CRT and EBD and (b) CRT and music education. Becoming a culturally responsive teacher requires becoming culturally competent, designing culturally relevant curricula, demonstrating cultural caring, building a community of learners, and maintaining high expectations for students. By incorporating this mind-set into daily teaching, music teachers should find success working with students with EBDs.