Developing Inclusive Pedagogy: How Pre-Service Teachers are Prepared to Support Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Student Learning

• In Event: Reimaging sustainable learning futures: Developing teachers’ research capacity toward global and equitable educational practices (Part 2)

Proposal

Objective

With a significant and continuous rise in immigration in the United States, culturally and linguistically diverse students continue to be underserved in the country’s current education systems. Specifically, UNESCO (2016) has identified linguistically diverse students as a population that is considered marginalized in education globally. The author investigated one specific teacher education program in a large public university in the Southwestern United States to understand how teachers are prepared to serve culturally and linguistically diverse students.
 
Research Questions

How are pre-service teachers at a large Southwestern university’s teacher education program prepared to teach culturally and linguistically diverse students? Specifically:
a) How do teacher education faculty and pre-service teachers conceive of the knowledge and pedagogy needed by future teachers in this Southwestern state schools?
b) How does the development of this knowledge and pedagogy contribute to a sense of self-efficacy among pre-service teachers?
c) What characterizes the university’s teacher education curriculum, and more specifically the course oriented to prepare future teachers to address the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students?

Theoretical framework

The study is grounded in Paris’s (2012) theory of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy.

Sample

The author selected one professor who taught the course dealing with diversity in the family and communities in multicultural settings (DFCMS) and 11 pre-service teachers enrolled in that course.

Instrumentation and Data Collection

A Self-Efficacy Questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and a curriculum analysis of a course in the program were implemented in this study.

Findings

The results show that future teachers in the teacher education program feel prepared to teach culturally and linguistically diverse students. The program and curriculum are characterized by objectives, assignments, and discussions that challenge students to develop culturally sustaining pedagogy by countering deficit thinking, incorporating prior student knowledge into elementary curricula, working to engage non-dominant families and communities in school systems, challenging existing power structures of school systems, and placing non-dominant families and communities in the positions of change agents. However, students found a disconnect between the theoretical understanding of how to develop culturally sustaining pedagogy and implementing the pedagogy when schools prioritize state standards that are perceived as exclusive to culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Significance

The study concludes that this specific teacher education program is preparing teachers to work with culturally and linguistically diverse students, engage with non-dominant families and communities in school systems, and is helping to move toward antiracism practices in the public-school system.

Author

• Meghan Couch Edwards