Creating a Common Statewide Understanding of Culturally Responsive Practice

• In Event: Preparing Culturally Responsive Teachers for Equity-Oriented Classrooms: How Do We Evaluate Their Effectiveness and Our Own?

Abstract

Purpose
This paper reports on the process of creating a common statewide understanding of culturally responsive practice for the purpose of facilitating assessment, professional learning, and other initiatives regarding culturally responsive practice.
Perspectives
The state of Delaware is one of the inaugural members of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) Diverse and Learner-Ready Teachers (DLRT) Initiative whose two goals are “building a pipeline of ethno-racially diverse and culturally responsive teachers” (Warner & Duncan, 2018). The core DLRT Delaware team, which is composed of representatives from the Delaware Department of Education, PK-12, and teacher preparation, identified a key mechanism for reaching those goals is to define culturally responsive practice in order to streamline communications and to leverage resources around promoting and supporting culturally responsive practice. This poster will document the development of this definition and accompanying rubric.
Approach
As a starting point, the team selected the eight competencies identified by New America:
• Reflect on one’s cultural lens
• Recognize and redress bias in the system
• Draw on students’ culture to share curriculum and instruction
• Bring real-world issues into the classroom
• Model high expectations for all students
• Promote respect for students’ differences
• Collaborate with families and the local community
• Communicate in linguistically and culturally responsive ways
[Muñiz, 2019)
The New America document notes: “Our review revealed that standards documents are typically composed of standards (big-picture statements that identify what teachers need to know and do) and elements (finer-grain statements that describe how teachers need can meet the standards), but only a few states articulate a continuum of practice that delineates what teachers should know and be able to do at various levels of development.” The DLRT team recognized the continuum of practice to be key to an effective and useful definition of culturally responsive practice.
The DLRT team laid out a plan to convene a design team to create a continuum of practice that included both pre-service and in-service teachers, and identified ways for the design team to vet the continuum with multiple stakeholder groups.
Projected Findings and Significance
The DLRT team expects that this continuum will facilitate a statewide commitment to culturally responsive practice in a number of ways. One such way will be to incorporate the continuum into the state performance appraisal system, which is currently being revised. Another way will be to design professional learning at the state, district, and teacher preparation levels around culturally responsive practice.

Authors

• Christine Carrino Gorowara, University of Delaware

• Chantalle Ashford, Indian River School District

• Raushann Austin, Delaware Department of Education

• Virginia Forcucci, Sussex Technical High School

• Shannon Holston, Independent Consultant

• Monique Martin, Delaware Department of Education

• Stacie Zdrojewski, Red Clay Consolidated School District