Creating Identity-Safe Classrooms: A Cultural Educational Psychology Approach to Teacher Interventions

• In Event: Innovative Interventions in Social and Cultural Contexts

Abstract

The Teacher Institute to Enhance Cultural Toolkits and Mindsets (TI) aimed to help teachers create identity safe classroom cultures (i.e., convey a belief in the malleability of student abilities and validate both interdependent and independent ways of being). The present study explores the influence of the TI on teachers’ efforts to create identity safety, as well as the influence of these efforts on their classroom practices and students’ attitudes. As predicted, teachers showed significant, sustained increases in their identity safety efforts. These sustained efforts predicted more culturally inclusive growth mindset practices, as well as more positive student school attitudes. These findings have important implications for the viability of facilitating education interventions that matter for both teachers and students.

Authors

• Kate Morman, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author

• Laura Brady, American Institutes for Research
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cong Wang, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mary C. Murphy, Indiana University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Megan Bang, Northwestern University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Stephanie Fryberg, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author