Culturally Responsive Preparation: Equipping Teachers of Color to Transgress

• In Event: 16.034 - Attending to the Preparation and Support of Teachers of Color: Preservice Through Induction Years

Abstract

Teachers of color have the potential to critically enhance students’ educational outcomes, but their success is not guaranteed. Recent studies highlight the need to probe the type of preparation experiences teachers of color receive before they begin teaching (Sleeter & Milner, 2011; Villegas & Davis, 2008). To develop a more nuanced understanding of their preparation, this paper aims to: 1) explore content and instructional approaches teacher candidates of color find most useful; 2) discern how faculty enact culturally responsive pedagogy with teacher candidates of color; and 3) investigate how teacher educators and teacher candidates of color make meaning of culturally responsive pedagogy in their teaching and learning experiences.
Culturally responsive teaching is a term that loosely refers to teachers’ ability to incorporate knowledge of students’ background and culture in their instructional practice to enhance student learning (Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1994). While many scholars have addressed the importance of culturally responsive practices for K-12 students of color, the conceptual framework of culturally responsive pedagogy can also be a powerful lens for exploring content and instructional practices for teacher candidates of color. To understand the utility of the culturally responsive teacher educator as a theoretical construct in teacher education, culturally responsive pedagogy is worn as a conceptual lens to examine a teacher educator’s instructional practices for teacher candidates of color.
This paper is based on a semester long qualitative case study of the undergraduate preparation experiences of three teacher candidates of color in a teacher educator’s elementary content approaches course at a public Hispanic Serving Institution. In order to understand the pedagogical decisions made by the teacher educator in tandem with the preparation experiences of teacher candidates of color, data sources of interviews, focus groups, faculty and student logs, and open-ended classroom observations were utilized.
The findings indicate that the teacher educator enacted the following pedagogical practices with teacher candidates of color: 1) facilitated classroom discussion that cast an empowered view of the academic and teaching abilities of teacher candidates of color; 2) created assignments that fostered the development of teacher candidates’ of color critical epistemological perspectives; and 3) equipped teacher candidates of color with pedagogical tools to serve as change agents in their future schools.
In light of the persistent need to diversify the teaching force, teachers of color must be prepared to act on the strengths the literature asserts they possess, and understanding how they are prepared to draw on these strengths is of critical importance. This research study makes an important contribution to the literature because it provides both a vivid illustration of what culturally responsive practices may look like in a teacher education classroom, and offers a useful conceptual framework for understanding how teacher educators can tailor pedagogical practices for teacher candidates of color that can help them to transgress oppressive schooling contexts in the future.

Author

• Conra D. Gist, University of Arkansas