How does culturally sustaining pedagogy differ from culturally responsive?

• A. Culturally sustaining pedagogy aims to sustain and value students' cultural identities; more expansive.
• B. It focuses only on language development
• C. It ignores cultural identities
• D. It is the same as culturally responsive

Answer: (A)

Culturally sustaining pedagogy centers on maintaining and valuing students' cultural identities over time within schooling. It treats languages, traditions, and ways of knowing as legitimate resources to be built upon, not something to be set aside. The aim is to actively sustain and develop those identities through curriculum, assessment, and daily practice, so students can carry their cultures forward inside and beyond the classroom. This is broader than merely making instruction responsive to students’ backgrounds; it seeks to embed cultural sustaining into the structure of education itself. The other ideas don’t fit because they either reduce the concept to language alone, imply cultures are ignored, or treat it as the same as culturally responsive, whereas culturally sustaining pedagogy explicitly emphasizes ongoing cultural preservation and expansion.