Preparing for Culturally Responsive Schooling: Initial Teacher Educators Into the Fray

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 451-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Vass
Keyword(s):  
School Leadership ◽  
Culturally Responsive ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Systemic Reform ◽  
Assessment Practices ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
Professional Renewal ◽  
Culturally Responsive Schooling ◽  
Practicum Experiences ◽  
Schooling Practices

In Australia, schools are experiencing increasing cultural diversity, alongside of nationalizing assessment and curricular and professional standards. It is raising concerns regarding the pace of systemic reform and sector wide professional renewal. Culturally responsive schooling practices may be helpful at this time because it locates the experiences of learners as powerfully influencing engagement and achievement. This article reports on “The culturally responsive schooling project,” a study focused on postgraduate students as they prepared for, undertook, and reflected on practicum experiences. Participants identified three barriers that impacted on their culturally responsive efforts: mentors encouraging limited and limiting curricula, pedagogic and assessment practices; mentors communicating resistance to doing things differently or valuing cultural responsiveness; and a fearful awareness of being evaluated by their mentors. The ambition of this discussion then is to encourage a rethink of the interconnections between teacher education, school leadership, and inservice professional development.

Formative Assessment in a Teacher Education Course

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-88
Author(s):  
Kerryn Dixon
Keyword(s):  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Formative Assessment ◽  
Student Teachers ◽  
Critical Literacy ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teacher Educator ◽  
Assessment Practices ◽  
Literacy Teachers ◽  
Postgraduate Students ◽  
Support Students

Although many teachers are sympathetic to critical literacy's social justice agenda, they are often unsure about how to implement it in their classrooms. This is particularly so in contexts where increased accountability requires standardized forms of assessment. The challenge for teacher educators is to find ways to support student teachers and teachers who are new to critical literacy. The chapter focuses on how postgraduate students new to critical literacy learn to use this approach with young children. The chapter explicates the ways in which formative assessment is practiced as part of a critical pedagogy to support students' understandings of critical literacy, it describes how low-risk opportunities to put critical literacy into practice are provided, furthermore it considers the ways in which dialogue works to support inexperienced critical literacy teachers and finally examines the benefits of formative assessment practices within a critical pedagogy from a teacher educator perspective.

Fostering Cultural Responsiveness in an Urban High School: A Case Study

2021 ◽  
pp. 019263652110365
Author(s):  
Jay Paredes Scribner ◽  
Donna H. Weingand ◽  
Karen Leigh Sanzo
Keyword(s):  
School Culture ◽  
School Leadership ◽  
Culturally Responsive ◽  
Cultural Responsiveness ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Student Needs ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Teacher Needs

Scholars and practitioners have increasingly recognized the role of culturally responsive school leadership (CRSL). However, few studies have applied recent comprehensive CRSL theoretical frameworks. This in-depth case study explores how a school leader understands and shapes a school culture to be increasingly culturally responsive to students. Utilizing recent conceptualizations of CRSL as a lens, two major findings were developed. First, the principal’s understanding of what it means to be a culturally responsive leader is centered on the student experience: meeting basic needs, seeking “vertical” engagement, and transforming student world views. Second, to meet those student needs the principal practiced differentiated instructional leadership according to individual teacher needs and oriented to fostering a culturally responsive school culture. We suggest future research carefully examine (1) the interplay of beliefs, dispositions, and values in CRSL play, and (2) how CRSL (where it exists) manifests as an organizational.

Creating Spaces for Urban Youth: The Emergence of Culturally Responsive (Hip-Hop) School Leadership and Pedagogy

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Khalifa
Keyword(s):  
Identity Development ◽  
School Leadership ◽  
Urban Youth ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Culturally Responsive ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Student Identities

AbstractLadson-Billings, Gay and among others have demonstrated the strong need for educational curriculum and practice to respond to the specific academic, cultural, and social needs of culturally unique, minoritized students. This article focuses on culturally responsive leadership practices for students with Hip-Hop identity performatives. This research uses theoretical frameworks from culturally relevant pedagogies and the scholarship that addresses how young students negotiate, perform, and reinvent and reestablish themselves through Hip-Hop culture, literacy, and identity. Such scholarship situates Hip-Hop pedagogies and student identity. This 2-year ethnographic study of an alternative school reports on how a culturally responsive school leader recognized and validated Hip-Hop student identities. Though he was somewhat removed from the Hip-Hop performative himself, the principal was able to create a safe space in which these student identities were able to exist, and in doing so, prevent the visceral impulse toward marginalization and exclusionary practice of Black and Latino Hip-Hop students that so many of his teachers possessed. Thus, the study discusses leadership theory, as it answers the following research question: How can urban school leaders play a role in forging a space for Hip-Hop identity development in the schools they lead? Secondarily it asks – given the tensions and contestations in representations of Hip-Hop music – if they should actually do this, and if so, what are the characteristics of such leadership?

scholarly journals Investigating the ‘integration of theory and practice’ in examination physical education

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 1036-1055 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Jones ◽  
Dawn Penney
Keyword(s):  
Physical Education ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Curriculum Planning ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Assessment Practices ◽  
Integrated Theory ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Official Curriculum

This paper presents theoretical insights and empirical findings from research in Western Australia (WA) that explored the concept of ‘integrated theory and practice’ in the context of the introduction of a new examination physical education course. The lack of conceptual clarity associated with attempts to embed ‘integration’ into curriculum developments in examination physical education internationally provided a stimulus for this research. Focusing on a new Physical Education Studies course in WA, the research foregrounded the concept of policy enactment and used Arnold’s framework of learning in, through and about movement as a critical frame to investigate the specific notions of integration that were embedded in the official curriculum text and expressed in pedagogical practices in schools implementing the new course. The paper reports findings from the investigation of the pedagogic meanings that four teachers gave to ‘integrated theory and practice’. The data illustrate the varied meanings teachers gave to ‘integration’ and the differences consequently arising in their curriculum planning, teaching and assessment practices associated with the new Physical Education Studies course. Analysis of the data identified opportunistic, structured and investigative ‘integrated’ pedagogies. Data associated with each approach are presented and the expression of Arnold’s dimensions within each approach explored. Discussion pursues the conditions enabling different pedagogical practices to emerge from the new Physical Education Studies course and the learning opportunities provided to students by the different pedagogical approaches. The paper presents a case for further engagement with the pedagogical expression of Arnold’s framework by curriculum developers, researchers, teacher educators and teachers.

Emotions: More than a “Feeling”

2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (13) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Mary Louise Gomez ◽  
Amy Johnson Lachuk
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Culturally Responsive ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Composition And Rhetoric ◽  
Practicing Teachers ◽  
Language Background ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Linguistic Backgrounds

What are emotions; and how do prospective and practicing teachers’ frame and understand them? How may teachers understand their own identities and those of their students as composed of intersectional dimensions of race, ethnicity, social class, gender, language background, abilities, and sexual orientation? What outcomes may occur as a result of these understandings? How may teacher educators respond when faced with these interpretations? Addressing these questions, we interrogate how emotions experienced by teachers influence how we see ourselves—our effectiveness; our relationships with students and families; and the curricula, pedagogies, and assessments we employ. We draw on our own experiences as teacher educators, as well as extant research, to explore answers to these questions. Studies across diverse fields indicate that emotions are more than feelings or uncontrollable responses to situations; rather, they are socially and culturally constructed and agreed upon among people. As teacher educators, what intrigues us most about this research on emotion are the implications it has for creating culturally responsive and socially just teachers—teachers who are able to effectively teach youth who come from racial, cultural, class, and linguistic backgrounds different from their own. We appeal to scholars from various traditions—philosophy, literature, cultural theory, composition and rhetoric, neuroscience, narrative inquiry, and teacher education—to question and elaborate what the term “others” may mean to teachers. Our twin goals are to demonstrate how often prospective and practicing teachers employ dichotomies of race, ethnicity, social class, language background/s, ability, and sexual orientation, among other dimensions of identity, to distinguish themselves from students and their families, and to begin exploring how teacher educators may provide alternatives to such imposed views.

The Impact of Identity and Culturally Responsive School Leadership: Leaders of Schools and Programs for the Deaf

2019 ◽  
pp. 120-144
Author(s):  
Catherine A. O’Brien
Keyword(s):  
Identity Development ◽  
School Leadership ◽  
Culturally Responsive ◽  
School Leaders ◽  
The United States ◽  
Deaf Culture ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
Deaf Students ◽  
Schools For The Deaf ◽  
Almost All

This chapter explores the relationship between culturally responsive school leadership and school culture in schools for the deaf. The author demonstrates how Deaf culture, identity, and culturally responsive school leadership intertwine and influence each other. This chapter reports on observations of and interviews with leaders in six schools for the deaf in the United States. Many current school leaders serving Deaf children lack knowledge and understanding of Deaf culture and Deaf identity. Culturally responsive leaders in the schools for the deaf that were studied were almost all part of Deaf culture. If school leaders are to better meet the needs deaf students’ education and identity development, they must recognize the students’ cultures and identities. The author makes a plea for better equipping potential principals and other leaders of schools for the deaf.

Curriculum Development in Technology-Enhanced Environments

2011 ◽  
pp. 492-504
Author(s):  
Mike Keppell ◽  
Eliza Au ◽  
Ada Ma ◽  
Christine Chan
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Implicit Theories ◽  
Assessment Practices ◽  
Educational Beliefs ◽  
Attitudes And Beliefs ◽  
Action Research Project ◽  
Teaching Learning ◽  
Insight Into

As teacher-educators, we are acutely aware of our responsibilities in nurturing the knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of pre-service teachers. As part of our interest in improving our teaching, learning, and assessment practices, we have been participating in an action-research project on technology-enhanced assessment over the last 12 months. Throughout this collaboration, we have become aware of our assessment practices and have been delighted that this has also resulted in a questioning of our current learning design for our modules and further clarity in our own thinking about why we teach the way that we do. The process of action-research has forced us to examine our educational beliefs and how these motivate our teaching and learning. This article focuses on why as teacher-educators it is our obligation to articulate our theories of teaching and learning. It is essential that we articulate these often-implicit theories not only as a means of engaging in dialogue with other teacher-educators, but also as a means of engaging in dialogue with our own students who are pre-service teachers. This cascading waterfall of dialogue and explicitness may allow pre-service teachers to gain insight into the decisions we make as teacher-educators and the rationale we use in our teaching. This obligation has important ramifications for the education of children in the Hong Kong setting, as pre-service teachers may see these explicit rationales as a guide to their own teaching within the early childhood, primary, and secondary settings.

Universal Design for Learning

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-158
Author(s):  
James Cressey
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Culturally Responsive ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Universal Design ◽  
Universal Design For Learning ◽  
Instructional Planning ◽  
Elementary Teacher Education ◽  
Culturally Responsive Practices ◽  
Design For Learning ◽  
Structural Inequities

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for curriculum and instructional planning through which educators can maximize accessibility and minimize barriers that are often experienced by learners. Culturally responsive practices strengthen and complement UDL by framing accessibility as an equity goal and prompting educators to examine ableism, racism, and other structural inequities. Teacher educators are in a unique position to introduce UDL to future elementary teachers and support them in developing inclusive pedagogical methods early on in their careers. Education technology tools are used within UDL to make curriculum materials more accessible and engaging. In this chapter, the UDL framework will be described along with culturally responsive applications within elementary teacher education.

Understanding the role of acculturative stress on refugee youth mental health: A systematic review and ecological approach to assessment and intervention

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana d’Abreu ◽  
Sara Castro-Olivo ◽  
Sarah K. Ura
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Acculturative Stress ◽  
Culturally Responsive ◽  
Refugee Children ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Assessment Practices ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Refugee Youth ◽  
Future Research Directions

In this article, we conduct a systematic review of the extant literature on the risk and protective factors that impact the healthy resettlement of refugee children around the world. We identify acculturative stress as a main risk factor to consider for assessment and intervention given that is often overlooked in the literature for refugee children, but has been found to strongly impact their socio-emotional development. In addition, we discuss ecologically framed/culturally responsive interventions and assessment practices that could aid in the successful resettlement of refugee children. We also discuss the limitations of the extant research on refugee children and make recommendations for future research directions.

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