Professional Learning in Asset-Based Pedagogy as a Pathway to Equity

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 3:20 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Teachers' Critical Development and Learning (Table 10)

Abstract

Among the challenges today’s educators face ranks the persistent underachievement of students from racially and culturally diverse backgrounds. Attempts to fix this often diminish students’ cultural ways of knowing and being, perpetuating inequity. Although educators want to do better, most have not been provided with the professional learning to support centering students’ voices and experiences as essential to learning
With a focus on asset-based pedagogy, I explored the impact of ongoing, job-embedded professional learning about culturally responsive-sustaining education on teachers’ beliefs about the importance of race and culture to teaching and learning and its impact on professional practice. When teachers engaged in this learning, the ensuing conversations sparked changes in instructional practice.

Author

• Elizabeth A. Bedell, York Suburban School District