Scaffolding rural children’s learning with home cultural capital; a strategy to decolonise curriculum in Africa through culturally responsive pedagogy

Culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) is an emerging strategy advocated for improving historically marginalised children’s learning. Yet, CRP has not been adequately theorised in Africa although the continent’s colonisation and multi-ethnic cultural context can offer some affordances. Therefore, this case study investigates home cultural capital supporting rural children’s learning and its implication for CRP. The study used participatory action research design, multiple data collection methods, after which a grounded theory approach was used for data analysis. The study identified that rural families possessed responsive social organisation and cultural practices, diverse family skills, and collectivist caring which provided crucial cultural capital for children’s learning. Therefore, integrating these Ghanaian rural families’ rich home cultural assets into school through CRP offers a ground-up approach to decolonise education for local and global relevance for rural communities. Developing culturally sensitive teachers who are collaborators in life-long learning and understand the significance of learners’ home culture to school learning is critical to create generative learning spaces in rural communities for children’s learning success.