Culturally responsive-sustaining education and student engagement: a call to integrate two fields for educational change

Historically, scholars in the fields of culturally responsive-sustaining education and student engagement have operated in separate silos, limiting their abilities to foster meaningful and significant change in education. In this conceptual article, we call for scholars in both fields to integrate their scholarship for the purposes of more fully enhancing students’ experiences and learning in schools. To do so, we provide overviews of key ideas in both fields and outline some limitations and challenges that could be addressed by integrating the fields. We also illustrate the synergy and alignment between these fields by using a recently developed tool from the New York State Education Department, The Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework, to demonstrate how the principles of culturally responsive-sustaining education align closely with the fundamental needs for human engagement outlined in 70 years of psychological research on student engagement. We argue that the integration of these two fields will support implementation of culturally responsive-sustaining education in ways that will positively and meaningfully engage all students in K-12 schools.