Enhancing Literacy through Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

Literacy development in Indonesian elementary schools remains uneven because formal curriculum expectations do not always align with learners’ sociocultural realities, local languages, and unequal access to learning resources. Although culturally responsive pedagogy and inclusive education have been widely discussed, limited comparative evidence explains how these approaches are enacted across urban, semi-urban, and rural school contexts in Indonesia. This study employed a qualitative multiple-case study design in three public elementary schools in South Sulawesi. Data were collected from 12 teachers, 3 principals, and 24 fifth-grade students through classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, student small-group discussions, and document analysis. The data were analysed thematically through deductive and inductive coding to identify patterns relating to literacy access, instructional adaptation, student participation, digital inclusion, and curriculum-context tensions. The findings indicate that inclusive literacy practices were shaped by the interaction of material access, teacher agency, culturally familiar texts, dialogic learning, and institutional support. Urban schools had stronger print and digital resources; however, meaningful participation still depended on teachers’ capacity to mediate texts, tasks, and classroom interaction in contextually relevant ways. Semi-urban schools demonstrated active adaptation through local stories, collaborative routines, and flexible questioning, whereas rural schools relied on oral storytelling, visual support, local dialect mediation, and community-based examples to broaden participation despite limited infrastructure. The study offers original comparative evidence showing that culturally responsive pedagogy functions as a practical mechanism for inclusive literacy within unequal school ecologies. Theoretically, it extends literacy-as-social-practice perspectives by linking participation, culture, and equity in classroom literacy processes. Practically and at policy level, the findings highlight the need for localised literacy materials, differentiated teacher professional development, stronger school-based learning communities, and more equitable distribution of print and digital resources so that literacy instruction can respond more directly to learners’ cultural, linguistic, and material conditions.

Curriculum · Dialogic · Documentation · Indonesian · Literacy · Qualitative property · Qualitative research · Sociocultural evolution · Child Development and Education · Literacy, Media, and Education · Multilingual Education and Policy