Tailored Teacher Education to Support Preservice Teachers' Critical Reflection Processes

• In Event: 30.080 - Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: 30.080-9 - Promoting Critical Reflection in Teacher Education to Achieve the Promise of Equal Educational Opportunity

Abstract

Purpose
That teachers often enter the teaching force unprepared to meet the needs of their culturally and linguistically diverse students has been long documented (see, e. g., Ladson-Billings, 1999; Sleeter, 2001, 2012). Critical reflection provides a conduit through which to stimulate PST’s culturally responsive practices (Author, 2016, Gay & Kirkland, 2003; Howard, 2003). Yet, research shows that given their unique biographical experiences, sociocultural identities, and nuanced positionalities, PSTs understandably vary in their abilities and willingness to engage in critical reflection (e.g., Author, 2016; Young, 2010). The question thusly emerges: how can teacher educators cultivate PSTs’ critical reflection processes and culturally responsive characteristics tailored to their individual, unique needs?

Theoretical Framework
The theory of culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Villegas & Lucas, 2002) sees classrooms as spaces in which to combat inequities by equipping students to be both highly competent and critically conscious of the world around them. Culturally responsive teachers trouble their own positionalities as they understand that critical reflexivity helps ensure that all students benefit from an equitable education (Cain, 2015; Gay & Kirkland, 2003).

Data Sources & Analysis
Data were collected over the span of a 15-week semester at a large research university in the Midwest. On the first day of class, students in a literacy education course completed Cain’s (2015) Multicultural Teacher Capacity Scale, a self-assessment that organizes culturally responsive teaching practices into 11 traits and allows teachers to identify themselves on a five-tiered continuum of nascent, emerging, progressing, advancing, and transformational orientations. Students were required to consider MTCS characteristic one, demonstrate sociocultural awareness, as well as characteristic nine, engage in critical reflection. Individually, students selected an additional MTCS characteristic to develop and hone throughout the semester. To show the ways in which classroom discussions, course readings, and assignments shaped their development, students completed weekly written reflections. Students used language from the MTCS and provided examples to demonstrate the degree to which they advanced along the MTCS continuum for particular characteristics.

Using the 11 a priori codes of the MTCS, I applied deductive qualitative analysis (Gilgun, 2010), coding first for all instances of a particular characteristic across all data sources; then, I returned to the data to identify the appropriate levels (nascent-transformational). To insure inter-rater reliability, I coded 5% of the data with two researchers familiar with the MTCS. Data were member checked throughout the analysis phase.

Findings
Findings reveal that on average, students progressed 1.4 levels across all MTCS characteristics. Students expressed that the project helped them develop a more nuanced understanding of the processes critical reflection requires. Sustained opportunities to engage in critical reflection germane to their selected characteristics increased students’ efficaciousness discussing, addressing, and designing culturally responsive lessons.

Significance
This study advances the field by offering a generative possibility for teacher preparation that provides PSTs with sustained opportunities for critical reflection and allows them to tailor coursework to their unique positionalities to support their development as culturally responsive practitioners.

Author

• Jeanne Dyches, Iowa State University