Current literature calls for more culturally responsive pedagogy and multicultural education to connect with what students know, do, and believe outside of school and to utilize this to foster their academic achievement. This study investigated elementary teachers' perceptions of culturally responsive pedagogy and multicultural education in an urban school with a predominantly large minoritized student population (African American and Hispanic students). The study focused on four elementary teachers' perceptions of implementing culturally responsive pedagogy and multicultural education principles into their classroom and how this contributed to teacher-student interactions and student academic achievement. An integrated framework consisting of constructs from the literature on culturally responsive pedagogy and multicultural education guided the study. A thematic analysis of data (interviews, focus group interview, classroom observations, artifacts) revealed four teacher perceptions of culturally responsive pedagogy and multicultural education: Practicing culturally responsive pedagogy and multicultural education: (1) enables teachers and students to embrace diversity; (2) focuses teachers and students on the past and the present social injustices and provides social justice identity development among students; (3) builds empathy among teachers and students; and (4) promotes teachers to reflect on prejudice reduction. Implications: This study showed that constructs from culturally responsive pedagogy and multicultural education are context-specific and curriculum-specific. To the teachers in this study the dynamics of practicing culturally responsive pedagogy and multicultural education are inherent within the school and community contexts and in the curriculum.

This study was designed to determine if teachers in one public school in Virginia were prepared to be evaluated based on culturally responsive practices (CRP) after completing Virginia Department of Education's (VDOE) Cultural Competency Training Module. This qualitative study sample included eight teachers from a suburban school division. The conceptual framework illustrated the connections between the evaluation of CRP and teacher preparedness after teachers completed VDOE's Cultural Competency Training Module. The research questions that directed this study were: (1) How has Virginia Department of Education's Cultural Competency Training Module prepared teachers to implement culturally responsive practices? (2) To what extent do teachers feel prepared to be evaluated based on culturally responsive practices after completing Virginia Department of Education's Cultural Competency Training Module? The research method included a basic qualitative research design that used interview protocol. Interview prompts were created based on Virginia's Cultural Competency Domains that underpin legislation approved by the 2021 Virginia General Assembly requiring that teacher evaluations include a standard for CRP. Interviews took place during the summer months of 2023 as virtual meetings using the Zoom video conferencing platform. Interview transcriptions were utilized as the data set. As categories and themes emerged, the interconnectedness of data was examined using open coding. The findings of this study revealed that teachers indicated a support for Virginia's Cultural Competency Domains. However, teachers perceived that VDOE's Cultural Competency Training Module did not achieve the desired focus of providing educators with the tools needed to implement CRP. Instead, teachers perceived that their lived experiences framed their individual approach to understand and implement CRP. The implications of the study encouraged VDOE to consider a redesign of the Cultural Competency Training Module. Another implication emphasized the need for school divisions to consider investing in professional trainers to provide deep level culturally competency training in a format that also accounts for the emotional security and comfortability of teachers. / Doctor of Education / This study was designed to determine if teachers in one public school in Virginia were prepared to be evaluated based on culturally responsive practices (CRP) after completing Virginia Department of Education's (VDOE) Cultural Competency Training Module. This study included eight teachers from a suburban school division. The conceptual framework illustrated the connections between the evaluation of CRP and teacher preparedness after teachers completed VDOE's Cultural Competency Training Module. The research questions that directed this study were: (1) How has Virginia Department of Education's Cultural Competency Training Module prepared teachers to implement culturally responsive practices? (2) To what extent do teachers feel prepared to be evaluated based on culturally responsive practices after completing Virginia Department of Education's Cultural Competency Training Module? The research method included teacher interviews. Interview prompts were created based on Virginia's Cultural Competency Domains that reinforced legislation approved by the 2021 Virginia General Assembly requiring that teacher evaluations include a standard for CRP. Interviews took place during the summer months of 2023 as virtual meetings using the Zoom video conferencing platform. Interview transcriptions were utilized as the data for the study. As categories and themes emerged from interview responses, the connection of data was examined. The findings of this study revealed that teachers indicated a support for Virginia's Cultural Competency Domains. However, teachers perceived that VDOE's Cultural Competency Training did not achieve the desired focus of providing educators with the tools needed to implement CRP. Instead, teachers perceived that their lived experiences framed their individual approach to understand and implement CRP. An implication of the study encouraged VDOE to consider a redesign of the Cultural Competency Training Module. Another implication emphasized the need for school divisions to consider investing in professional trainers to provide deep level culturally competency training in a format that also accounts for the emotional security and comfortability of teachers.

The purpose of this study was to identify the strategies that middle school teachers utilize when incorporating culturally responsive pedagogy and practices to build positive relationships with students and families while building and maintaining positive student-peer relationships in the classroom. This qualitative study design, conducted in an urban public-school division in central Virginia, employed a teacher interview protocol questionnaire featuring open-ended questions. The primary objective was to investigate how middle school teachers utilize and incorporate culturally responsive pedagogical practices to build and maintain positive relationships with students, families, and peers. The resulting findings indicated teachers established cultural awareness and diversity to build and maintain relationships, communicated effectively through conferencing and discussions with their students, and communicated effectively through emails and in-person with their students' families. Teachers used multiple communication strategies for parent involvement, such as phone calls, text messages, emails, conferences, and social media. Students sharing life experiences during discussion helped them understand the material and establish classroom culture and diversity. Thus, implications indicated school divisions and building administrators should continually participate in cultural competence training, provide teachers with professional development to establish regular and consistent communication channels with students' families to build positive relationships, provide teachers with professional development to implement culturally responsive pedagogy, provide time for teachers to incorporate open-ended questions and alternative perspectives into lessons to stimulate critical thinking, and building-level administrators should foster a school culture that embraces diverse values by establishing and consistently reinforcing clear expectations of respect for all students and adults. / Doctor of Education / The purpose of this study was to identify the strategies that middle school teachers utilize when incorporating culturally responsive pedagogy and practices to build positive relationships with students and families while building and maintaining positive student-peer relationships in the classroom. The synthesis of the literature review and the results of this study may perhaps provide information that would support middle school teachers not only with the ability to build relationships with their students and their families and positive peer relationships but also improve cultural knowledge to increase and enhance academic achievement and decrease discipline concerns. A qualitative study design was used in one urban public-school division in the central region of Virginia, which incorporated a teacher interview protocol questionnaire with open-ended questions. The researcher sought to examine: How do middle school teachers utilize and incorporate culturally responsive pedagogical practices to build and maintain positive relationships with students, families, and peers? An analysis of the responses to the interview questionnaire from the middle school teachers revealed strategies used consistently and inconsistently throughout the sample. From the findings, implications for practices and recommendations for future studies were supplied.

<p dir="ltr">American society’s increase in ethnic textures, interracial tension, immigrants, religion, gender, disability, ability, and students who speak languages other than English as their first language prolongs the pedagogical challenges teachers encounter in the classroom due to diversity. This study explored the experiences of secondary social studies teachers as curricular-instructional gatekeepers implementing culturally responsive pedagogy in times of socio-political tensions in the United States. The teacher as curricular-instructional gatekeeper framework guided this research. By adopting a qualitative multiple-case study, I utilized interviews with four teachers, two hundred hours of classroom observation, and document analysis as data sources. The findings revealed that the social studies gatekeepers’ culturally responsive practices amidst the present socio-political tensions included exposing diverse perspectives to diverse students, leveraging culturally diverse learners’ lived experiences, diversifying instructional methodologies for diverse learners, and confronting stereotypes in a culturally diverse classroom. Moreover, I discovered that present happenings influence culturally responsive practices by presenting difficulty in exposing specific topics to diverse learners, limiting classroom participation for responsive teaching, increasing workload in planning responsive lessons, and becoming a better teacher in a culturally diverse classroom. I recommend that further research should be conducted to explore the role of teacher education programs in preparing pre-service or in-service teachers to implement culturally responsive practices, how the multiple identities of in-service social studies teachers interplay to influence their implementation of culturally responsive practices, and how professional development training offered to in-service social studies teachers prepare them to implement culturally responsive practices amidst the growing legislation in the United States.</p>

School cultures, curriculum, and instruction are too often created through a monocultural lens, which excludes Black and Latino/a/x students both socially and academically, and perpetuates the false notion that these students are inherently less capable of achieving academic success when compared to their White counterparts. This is visible across all content areas, but especially in secondary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classes, which means that our Black and Latino/a/x students are continually denied preparation for the critical, high demand careers in the STEM field. Just as critical, with the dominance of White teachers in the classroom, out Black and Latino/a/x students often do not have access to teachers who share their lived experiences or who understand the nuances of their home cultures. However, teachers and school instructional leaders can change course by focusing their efforts to develop a rich cultural consciousness, and by focusing on the utilization of culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) and related instructional strategies with great intentionality in the classroom. This mixed method, single site, exploratory case study was conducted to examine Black and Latino/a/x students' perceptions of their culturally responsive STEM teachers' cultural consciousness, and culturally responsive STEM teachers' perceptions of culturally responsive practices and their Black and Latino/a/x academic abilities. The results provide a clear discrepancy between STEM teacher and Black and Latino/a/x student perspectives that emphasizes a tension between them. This tension must be further explored and highlights a critical need for STEM specific professional development that encompasses both culturally responsive practices and opportunities to develop a critical consciousness.

The focus of this study was on how to help narrow the achievement gap between Native American students and their non-Native peers in an urban Oklahoma school district. A qualitative case study approach was used to answer the questions of how parents of Native American students perceive their children's academic success in reading and mathematics in Grade 1- Grade 12 and why they believe their children have consistently (or historically) performed below district, state, and national expectations in these subjects in an attempt to better understand the achievement gap. Progress reports, institutional reports, and standards-based test scores were indicative of the widening achievement gap between Native American students and their non-Native peers. Bourdieu's cultural capital theory supported by Epstein's model of parental involvement were used as the conceptual framework for this study. Six parents of Native American students in Grade 1– Grade 12 were selected as participants and were interviewed using open-ended, semistructured questions to gain insight and help to answer the research questions. The coding of collected data, an analysis of emergent themes and triangulation, peer debriefing, and member checks were all utilized as analytical procedures to ensure accuracy and credibility. Results from the study revealed that parents of Native American students perceive their students' academic success as a struggle and identify parental involvement, curriculum relatability, class size and communication among some of the barriers to their students' success. Implications for positive social change for this study included the potential to inform more effective teaching strategies for teachers who teach Native American students, inform their curriculum development, and foster the empowerment of Native American families.

The purpose of this autoethnographic study was to critically examine my personal experiences with culture and race to better understand myself, my perceptions of culture and race, and how my perceptions of educators' interactions with culturally and racially diverse students may have been impacted as a result. Autoethnography is the study of self in which researchers draw on their own experiences to understand a culture or phenomenon. The following research questions guided the study: 1) what does an examination of my lived experiences as an African American female educator reveal about me? and 2) what are the potential implications for my role as an administrator? Data sources consisted of journal entries, notes, and narratives based on my lived experiences. The data were analyzed by initial coding to uncover recurring themes in the narratives of: 1) negative perceptions of those offended by issues of race; 2) the need to promote cultural awareness; and 3) personal silence around issues of race. The themes were then examined through the lens of critical race theory with specific attention to the tenets of permanence of race, interest convergence, intersectionality, and storytelling. The insights provided here in response to the first research question were then considered in light of the framework of culturally responsive pedagogy and leadership, thus responding to the second question. The implications discussed provide insights for me personally as a teacher leader, for educators in general, and for future researchers.

All educators are responsible for making their students feel safe, capable, and seen in the classroom. One way this can be accomplished is by implementing culturally responsive pedagogy. Our students will come from many different backgrounds. One of the most vital ways students will feel seen is by having characters in the books they read that they can identify with and learn from. Therefore, teachers should put effort into including children's literature in their classrooms by choosing culturally diverse books that are also high-quality and align with state standards. There are many high-quality pieces of children's literature that include culturally diverse protagonists, and finding these books is the focus of this study. High-quality multicultural literature exists and is celebrated by several race-based literature awards. This thesis analyzes race-based literature awards for African American and Hispanic children's literature, Florida's ELA standards, and the state's student demographics to create a standards-based inventory list of multicultural K-2 children's literature to distribute to teachers in Orange County. This inventory list acts as a guide and starting point for teachers to see how to choose literature with characters that represent the students, they teach without sacrificing the quality of education. When teachers have the resources to choose high-quality multicultural literature, they can implement them across other disciplines.

This dissertation interprets a qualitative study designed to investigate the pedagogical practices of experienced science teachers who, through their teaching practices, promote learning and achievement of urban African American middle school students between the ages 10-13 years. Based upon the theoretical frameworks of the theory of third space and culturally-responsive pedagogy, this study targeted the pedagogical practices that connected home-to-school experiences. The study sample consisted of 17 students, 2 experienced science teachers, and 1 principal from the same urban middle school. Data collected over a six-month period include in-depth individual interviews, classroom observations, audio recordings, videotaping, and review of documentation. Interviews focused on the participants' experiences, views, and the role each played in learning and achievement. Classroom observations provided additional insights into the classroom setting, participants' actions, and participants' interactions with the teachers and other students. The student focus group emphasized the students' perspectives of their teacher and her teaching strategies. A whole-text analysis of the interview transcripts, observational field notes, video recording and documents generated three major categories: connection to students, classroom management, and instructional pedagogy. The following significant findings emerged from the data: (a) the beliefs and views of teachers affect their classroom practices; (b) when teachers build rapport with African American students, they are better able to create trust, increase the comfort level in their classroom, and motivate learning; (c) a teacher's use of home-to-school connections motivates students' interest in learning while helping them to make connections to curriculum, (d) the type of classroom management practices a teacher uses can enhance effective content implementation, and (e) a teacher's varied instructional pedagogical practices can provide African American students the opportunity they need to demonstrate knowledge and achievement. Implications for middle school teachers, students, parents, administrators, and teacher educators are included. Suggestions for future research are also provided. The results from this qualitative study strongly suggest that third space theory provides a theoretical framework for understanding the connections necessary for bridging a culturally-responsive disposition and a continuum between home and school experiences, which is critical in a science classroom populated by urban African American students. / Ph. D.

abstract: One of the major issues confronting education in Arizona and across the United States has been the consistent low performance of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students in comparison to their peers as evidenced by the disparity of the achievement gap at every level in the educational pipeline. A contributing factor has been the lack of teacher preparation focused on teaching CLD students. Preparation focused on a culturally responsive curriculum about dispositions and pedagogical knowledge and skills as well as field experience placement with CLD students have been previously identified areas to consider when training preservice teachers (PSTs). Therefore, this study examined how a Culturally Responsive and Linguistic Teaching (CRLT) Framework would raise preservice teacher’s critical consciousness about teaching CLD students. The CRLT Framework focused on two specific areas; (a) a culturally responsive curriculum and (b) a team-based service-learning experience. The CRP curriculum included lessons designed to increase PSTs understanding about how their sociolinguist views influenced their pedagogical knowledge about teaching CLD students. In addition, the team-based service-learning approach, as a community of practice, provided experiences for PSTs to apply theory to practice. A mixed method analysis was employed to collect and analyze the quantitative data (surveys) and qualitative data (interviews and photovoice). Results from this study suggested increases in PSTs’ knowledge, self-efficacy, and perceptions of usefulness of CRP in their future practices. The team-based, service-learning component, which was based on a community of practice framework, enhanced the learning experience by allowing students to move from theory to practice and served as an important contributing factor to the overall results. Given the findings of this research study, it appeared that an introductory course focused on a culturally responsive and linguistic teaching influenced PSTs’ dispositions, knowledge, and skills. Thus, providing an introductory course, earlier rather than later, has the potential to change the trajectory of preparing PSTs so they were more prepared to teach CLD students as they continued through their program of study. Results showed effective work with CLD students was about so much more than ‘just good teaching.’ / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2019