Teacher Comfort and Preparedness for Teaching Diverse Students: Setting the Foundation for Equitable Classroom Practices

• In Event: Establishing a Culture of Equity in Teacher Preparation and Development

Abstract

Professional development programs that help teachers understand and respond to individual students’ strengths and needs can support equity in the classroom by building teachers’ preparedness and comfort, which enhances the likelihood of teachers’ engaging in differentiated instruction to support all students. This proposed paper presentation draws from two randomized controlled trials of Math for All, which show consistent, positive results of the professional development program on elementary school teachers’ reports of comfort and preparedness to teach mathematics to diverse students. Comfort and preparedness are dispositions that along with teacher knowledge, comprise teacher quality (cf. Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002). We also found comfort and preparedness to be modestly but consistently related to self-reported mathematical instructional practices across both studies.

Authors

• Teresa Garcia Duncan, Deacon Hill Research Associates LLC

• Jason Schoeneberger, ICF International

• John H. Hitchcock, Westat

• Babette Moeller, Education Development Center, Inc.