Challenging the Cultural "Taken-for-Grantedness" of Preservice Teacher Candidates in a Program of Urban Teacher Preparation: Implications for Education of Urban Teachers (original) (raw)
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Teaching and Teacher Education, 2011
This three-year study combines qualitative and quantitative analyses of effects of a one-week, intensive urban field placement on 95 suburban and rural teacher candidates' self-reported perceptions of urban schools, students, teachers. Data was drawn from anonymous, open-ended, pre-and post-experience participant surveys; reflections; and alumni interviews. Findings include improvement in confidence in cross-cultural teaching abilities and interest in urban schools for future employment. Pre-service teachers' perceptions can be meaningfully influenced by a short-term, cross-cultural immersion program when it is situated within a mutually-reinforcing, multicultural education curriculum that offers significant faculty scaffolding and structured reflection.
2011
Currently there is an increasing focus on teacher quality in educational reform, a lack of empirical research on exactly what culturally responsive teaching looks like, and a great deal of confusion on how teacher dispositions may be important in education. This study seeks to examine what great teachers believe, intend, and do while examining their dispositions in the process. Three research questions guided this study: 1) What are the intentions and beliefs of culturally responsive teachers? 2) How does culturally responsive teaching operationalize? 3) What are the dispositions of culturally responsive teachers? To respond to these questions, I use Educational Criticism and Connoisseurship, a qualitative research method developed by Eliot Eisner (1998). Educational criticism is comprised of four dimensions: description, interpretation, evaluation, and thematics. The findings suggest that there are similarities in the intentions, beliefs, operations, and dispositions of culturally responsive teachers. However, it was readily apparent that culturally responsive teaching operationalized differently for different teachers, leaving us to recognize that we cannot simply give teachers a checklist to ensure that great teaching manifests. Further, the study revealed that while the participants sought to reach the aims of what many culturally responsive scholars seek, they are iii confused by the label resulting in unintended consequences. This leads to the suggestion of evolving the label culturally responsive pedagogy to personalized pedagogy. Finally, the study recognizes the controllable and uncontrollable contexts of education. This has broad sweeping ramifications for policymakers and administrators, as they must recognize in their hunt for identifying what quality teachers do, there are a number of elements outside of teachers' control that affect students' educations. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are a myriad of people I would like to sincerely thank for their direction and support in this journey to a dissertation. First and foremost I would like to thank my advisor, mentor, and colleague Dr. Bruce Uhrmacher, who has pushed me on my ideas, provided invaluable feedback, and supported me throughout not only this process, but throughout my time at the University of Denver. I will never be able to repay him for his wisdom, humility, and kindness. I would also like to thank my co-advisor, Dr. Maria Salazar, who helped guide me on this examination of culturally responsive teaching. I would also like to thank Dr. Paul Michalec, who has served as my teacher, my therapist, and my colleague throughout my career at DU. Finally, I am also grateful for the support of others at DU, including Dr.
Preservice teachers' learning about cultural and racial diversity Implications for urban education
Urban Education, 2006
Several essential interactions or experiences that had an influence on preservice teachers' learning and understanding about urban education and diversity are described and discussed. In particular, the author introduces a developmental typology that was used to analyze the preservice teachers' learning and understanding as a result of a course designed to help preservice teachers develop the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and attitudes necessary to teach in highly diverse and urban school contexts. These developmental interactions that made a critical difference in the preservice teachers' learning included cultural and racial awareness and insight, critical reflection, and a bridge between theory and practice. Understanding the influence of courses in teacher education that endeavor to provide learning spaces for preservice teachers is especially important as we document the most salient ways to provide all prospective teachers with what they need to make meaningful and significant differences in P-12 urban classrooms.
Journal of teacher education, 2001
This article reviews data-based research studies on preservice teacher preparation for multicultural schools, particularly schools that serve historically underserved communities. In this article, the author reviews 80 studies of effects of various preservice teacher education strategies, including recruiting and selecting students, cross-cultural immersion experiences, multicultural education coursework, and program restructuring. Although there is a large quantity of research, very little of it actually examines which strategies prepare strong teachers. Most of the research focuses on addressing the attitudes and lack of knowledge of White preservice students. This review argues that although this is a very important problem that does need to be addressed, it is not the same as figuring out how to populate the teaching profession with excellent multicultural and culturally responsive teachers.
1995
This study examined the impact of multicultural education courses on preservice teachers' pedagogical knowledge and beliefs about culturally diverse learners. Part 1 reports on a study of 20 preservice teachers pursuing a masters degree in elementary education enrolled in a required multicultural education course and were examined for their attitudes as a consequence of taking the course. All but one student were female; 10 were White, 6 were Hispanic American, 2 were.Asian, and 2 were Fillipino. The course was designed to develop a conceptual framework to understand and deal with differences and to help teachers become aware of how personal attitudes affect how an individual deals with difference. Data were collected using concept mapping and a survey to assess the preservice teachers' beliefs. Results indicated that students exhibited distinct patterns of conceptual change after the course. Part 2 presents two case studies based on in-depth interviews augmenting existing data of two individuals who had participated in the first study. Results indicated that though the two shared some similarities, they pursued distinct pathways in their changing conceptualizations of good teaching for diverse students. One tended to use her personal
The Journal of Multiculturalism in Education, 2012
To address the issue of pre-service teachers being under-prepared for work in multicultural and impoverished environments in America’s urban schools, teacher education programs have taken steps to improve diversity-oriented curricula and provide relevant fieldwork experience. However, research indicates that a large proportion of teacher candidates still do not have the necessary skills to deal with students from divergent upbringings. This interpretive study investigated the beliefs of pre-service teachers about urban students and how well their teacher education programs are addressing the issues of working in inner-city schools. The results revealed that, although some progress has been made, a significant gap remains between the need to prepare teachers for work in urban schools and the reality that many teacher education programs fall short of this goal. The authors concluded that further research is necessary to pinpoint the failings of teacher education programs in training future teachers for work in diverse settings.