This capstone project was part of a group project completed by five school and district administrators in Hillsborough County, Florida. The project began because of our passion for teachers who are able to establish a culture of care in their classrooms that support students academically but transform their learning through experiences that enable them to be more highly engaged and productive students, regardless of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, perceived academic abilities, and backgrounds. Our school district has spent significant resources attempting to address the deficiencies that exist within its lower performing schools. A variety of curriculum specialists have addressed challenges these largely Title 1 schools are facing, with little to moderate improvement shown over the course of several years. Selected literature over the past ten years was reviewed to gain insight into developments and discussions that have materialized around the notions of culturally relevant (curricular/pedagogical) leadership in schools. My component of this project was guided by the question: How is cultural diversity addressed in curriculum so as to be relevant to the success of traditionally marginalized students (students of color and/or those from communities of low socio economic status)? Insights from the literature reviewed suggest that Appreciative Inquiry as a more holistic approach to cultural relevancy creates greater opportunity for deliberate and intentional building of relationships of respect and responsibility, giving rise to social consciousness and not just improved test performance.

This research examines the failure of AB 101 (Alejo) a bill that would have created a statewide ethnic studies curriculum in California. Through a qualitative analysis consisting primarily of interviews, the analysis challenges the validity of the main oppositional arguments against the bill. Then argues that misunderstandings regarding the implications of ethnic studies curriculum, leading to an unwillingness to fund such programs, has served as the main barrier in enacting a statewide curriculum. Lastly, the work identifies the social and political conditions needed to overcome such barriers. In conclusion, the research suggests that, through time, as local ethnic studies programs become more prominent, and research on the impact of ethnic studies becomes more robust, California will be in a place to be one of the first states to pass a statewide ethnic studies curriculum.

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This thesis questions what it was like for pre-service teachers registered in a Bachelor of Education program to experience Kpanlogo, a West African dance from Ghana. Over a period of two years, the primary researcher introduced this dance to her peers first as a pre-service teacher, and then as a graduate student in a variety of ways: 1) practicing it for a performance at a community building talent show on campus, 2) learning it through a professional development workshop, and 3) teaching it to intermediate students at a local school, on two different occasions. Five pre-service teachers responded to an invitation to participate in a phenomenological study about their experiences. The two research questions which guided the interviews were: 1) What was it like to experience Kpanlogo, a West African dance, as a pre-service teacher? 2) What was it like as a pre-service teacher to teach students Kpanlogo? The conceptual framework of Sankofa Cyclical Waves, situated in a collectivist African Worldview orients us to the philosophy of Ubuntu, which posits that humanness is found and cultivated within community. Sankofa, a Ghanaian proverb which encourages its people to go back, physically or spiritually, to retrieve what was once lost or forgotten was used as a particular path to analyze the lived experiences of the pre-service teachers. In this thesis the Sankofa Cyclical Waves provided a structure to identify their various levels of understanding Ubuntu. Experiences analyzed as being novice in nature were awkward at the start, then as the dancer moves towards the end of the continuum, towards Ubuntu, the dancer moves through a series of waves as they become more familiar with rhythms, movements, African dance attire, and becoming a part of the whole; the Other‘s community.