Challenging Class: The Instructional Practices of Highly Effective Teachers in Working-Class Communities

• In Event: 67.068 - MTCC Roundtable Session 32
  In Roundtable Session: 67.068-2 - Disrupting Deficit Thinking of Teaching Through Innovation

Abstract

This strength-based study of the experiences in the classrooms of highly effective teachers in working-class communities resulted in specific and replicable instructional practices that reflect the tremendous opportunities teachers have to impact students’ learning and social class trajectories. The highly effective teachers in this study worked incredibly hard to help their students thrive academically, socially, and emotionally; they drew on diverse pedagogical tools simultaneously, and delivered dynamic, contextualized, rigorous, and deeply caring instruction to support all students and help them learn. They also employed many strategies not evident in classrooms in a upper-class community, including making hidden curriculum and its arbitrariness visible. Teachers in all communities could and should learn from these highly effective teachers in working-class communities.

Author

• Rebecca Hatkoff, Claremont Graduate University