Culturally Responsive Teaching: Teacher Candidates Identify What’s Important

Presenter Information

Jeania Jones
Lindsay Gallon
Kim Cheek

Faculty Sponsor

Dr. Kim Cheek

Faculty Sponsor College

College of Education and Human Services

Faculty Sponsor Department

Education

Location

SOARS Virtual Conference

Presentation Website

https://unfsoars.domains.unf.edu/2021/posters/culturally-responsive-teaching-teacher-candidates-identify-whats-important/

Keywords

SOARS (Conference) (2021 : University of North Florida) – Archives; SOARS (Conference) (2021 : University of North Florida) – Posters; University of North Florida -- Students -- Research – Posters; University of North Florida. Office of Undergraduate Research; University of North Florida. Graduate School; College students – Research -- Florida – Jacksonville – Posters; University of North Florida – Graduate students – Research – Posters; University of North Florida. Department of Childhood Education; Literacy; and TESOL -- Research – Posters; Honorable Mention Award Winner

Abstract

Honorable Mention Winner

Teacher preparation programs prepare teacher candidates (TC) with clinically rich field experiences. These programs prepare teachers to teach groups of students that are culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse. The TCs that participated in this study were in the first semester of the elementary program and were concerned with an experience that would be remote. COVID-19 impacted the experiences of the TCs by removing the field component during the Fall 2020 semester. The candidates were not provided access in the elementary schools to complete the practical experiences due to the districts’ pandemic guidelines. Due to the lack of exposure to diverse elementary students, the researchers wondered what the TCs would be interested in learning during a remote semester. This study was framed around culturally responsive teaching (CRT) and Geneva Gay’s five CRT essential elements. The TCs completed a survey in which they identified five items from the Culturally Responsive Teaching Self-Efficacy Scale (CRTSE) that they were most interested in learning during a pandemic semester. There was inconsistency in what culturally responsive teaching items the TCs were most interested to learn. Implications for the study were discussed.

Comments

Audio Presentation Transcript:

Hello, I’m Lindsay Gallon and I’ll present our poster presentation on culturally responsive teaching teacher candidates identify what’s important.

This was a collaboration between Jeania Jones, myself, and Doctor Kim Cheek and we are faculty for the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum.

In the College of Education and Human Services.

Jeania and myself are also doctoral students in the Educational Leadership Program here at UNF.

And Doctor Kim Cheek serves as a mentor for us.

As we completed this study.

We are a part of the teacher preparation program for the college that helps prepare teacher candidates which you’ll see referred to as TC’s with clinically rich field experiences, and so those field experiences are connected to teacher candidates actually going.

Into schools and classrooms and working with students and teaching students to gain experience.

Well due to COVID-19, the impact on that experience was required there to be a shift where teacher candidates we had could not participate in the fill component during the fall 2020 semester.

And so the study was framed around culturally responsive teaching, which you’ll see referred to as CRT and Gay’s 5 CRT essential elements.

So to introduce our study, elementary teacher candidates

Need to be prepared to teach students from diverse cultures, racial and linguistic groups in Geneva, Gay mentions that teacher canoness need to view their students cultural backgrounds as assets foster a positive classroom climate and recognize that students cultures are important aspects of their identity.

And so in their collaboration, we determined that teacher candidates needed to have a voice about what they wanted to learn about culturally responsive teaching.

And so the purpose of the study was to investigate our introductory teacher candidates in their field experience and what they were interested in learning about, culturally responsive teaching during a pandemic, when they didn’t have access to being classrooms working with.

Children and students.

And so there were two parts to this study.

The first part.

The students the teacher candidates were provided with an electronic survey for them to identify 5 aspects of culturally responsive teaching that they wanted to learn in that semester.

And the second part of this study, the teacher candidates completed a peer coaching cycle where they were in the role of a teacher as well as the role of a peer coach.

But through remote instruction teaching each other.

And so they completed a peer coaching observation form.

And reflection that connects two culturally responsive teaching and that information was submitted for analysis of the data.

In that we took, we offered this to 66 students enrolled in the remote course, which about 48% of them participated and our participants were primarily white female.

So when we get into our instrument that we used for this study to survey our teacher candidates, we use the cultural responsive teaching self efficacy scale by Siwatu.

I mean.

And we took out the self efficacy component to allow to allow the focus to be more connected to Gay’s, 5 essential elements of culturally responsive teaching and that was done because we determined that it was more comprehensive in aspects connected to culturally responsive teaching around caring.

Communication and teacher knowledge development and then we also used Geneva Gay’s 5 essential elements to code the data and those elements are designing culturally relevant curricula.

Demonstrating cultural caring and building learning.

Communities cross cultural communication.

Cultural congruity in classroom instruction and acquiring culturally diverse knowledge base.

As we move into the results again, there were two parts to this study and table.

One shows things that teacher candidates want to learn about culturally responsive teaching, and in that we found they were most interested in.

In learning how to adapt instruction to meet the needs of students and also to build a sense of trust with students, and they were least interested in the ways in which standardized tests may be biased towards linguistically diverse students.

An also least interested in determining student preferences for group work, and in that first part we were able to determine that and review the data for that in Part 2.

Teacher candidates mentioned the cultural congruity as an area where there was both success and challenges in their lesson reflection.

And that cultural congruity.

Was connected to their professional growth as they were wanting to.

Learn the caring and fostering learning communities.

And on to our discussion and conclusions.

Yes.

The teacher candidates they taught their lessons remotely to peers who were culturally and linguistically similar to them.

In their in their in their teaching.

And so the experiences were found to be more theoretical than practical, as they were not actually teaching students in a classroom.

And it also was found that teacher candidates primarily focus their CRT.

Connections to ELL’s, which are English language learners and we felt or found that it could have attributed from the students taking a TESOL course which is teaching English to speakers of other languages.

So to further in the study for part one of the instrument, we would revise allowing teacher candidates to provide a rationale on their choices from the survey that were most important to them, and then also having more of a broad range of supervisors.

To take the survey and see the alignment that the supervisors and teacher candidates have connected to culturally responsive teaching.

And to do further study.

We would ensure that supervisors would be provided adequate professional learning around culturally responsive teaching and peer coaching as it connected to Geneva Gay’s.

5 essential elements that was mentioned earlier in this presentation and so some limitations that we found were we were not, we didn’t.

Ask Teacher candidates to provide a rationale on their selections in the survey, which made it difficult to determine what some of their responses meant in their reflections and completing the survey.

We also found limitations to be connected to only having one.

Field seminar dedicated to introduce culturally responsive teaching to students.

And one field seminar connected to introducing peer coaching to teacher candidates.

While they did have support of six supervisors from the program, there was no certainty that there was consistency in the information that was provided in the seminars being provided by those supporting supervisors during that time.

Are references for this.

Poster or Geneva Gay and Siwatu as we mentioned using her elements of culturally responsive teaching.

And Siwatu’s self efficacy, scale and so we’d like to thank you for taking the time to listen to our presentation on culturally responsive teaching teacher candidates identify.

What’s important?

Thank you.

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