Equity-Centered Professional Learning: Using Lab Classrooms to Prepare Teachers for Culturally Sustaining Instruction

• In Event: Bridging and Connecting: Culturally Responsive Schooling

Abstract

This study seeks to address gaps in teacher development, specifically in the ways we prepare educators to work with linguistically, culturally, and neurologically diverse youth. This purpose of this paper is to provide a model for equity-centered professional development on culturally sustaining instruction and to offer an analysis of the impact of such models on teacher practices and dispositions. Situated within an urban, alternative school district, the researchers created a summer-long, equity-centered lab-model of professional development grounded in humanizing pedagogies that were nurturing and empowering to the district population. Field notes, interviews, focus groups, pre-and post-surveys, and observations of the teacher participants will demonstrate the positive impact this experience had on the teachers’ relationships and pedagogies with their students.

Author

• Jody N. Polleck, Hunter College - CUNY