This study investigated the efficacy of culturally adapted bibliotherapy in promoting resilience among American Samoan children aged 5-13 years in response to high adolescent suicide rates in the Pacific Islands and the need for culturally adapted and supportive interventions grounded in mental health wellness. Bibliotherapy, particularly the identification with story characters, has been recognized for bolstering mental wellness, resilience, and emotional regulation in children. In this research, the children's response to bibliotherapy was measured through card sorting and forced-choice exercises, assessing their engagement with literature mirroring their experiences. The materials were developed in collaboration with Samoan cultural brokers on island to ensure cultural relevance, focusing on emotions commonly faced by children, such as sadness, anger, and fear, within the context of school bullying and the grief of losing a loved one. Findings suggest that the adapted stories significantly aided the children in relating to the characters and their challenges, demonstrating that culturally sensitive bibliotherapy may be a promising approach for reinforcing resilience in Pacific Islander communities. The study concludes with a discussion on the practical applications of these findings.

Learning to value ourselves as uniquely endowed, understanding our irreplaceable fit into the social and environmental fabric, and becoming active agents woven into our communities will maximize our capacity for progressive change through empowerment. There are effective practices in orchestrating learning environments for empowerment that have ancient and proven roots but have become marginalized in contemporary education. These ways focus on fostering the development of unique gifts and group cohesion, as opposed the fostering of independence and competition, the latter being two ideologies not found in Nature when it is in balance and harmony. This reversal in paradigm will reclaim our ability to critically problem-solve and evoke transformative action by increasing the diversity of perspectives and talents focused on an endeavor. Central to this research is an exploration of the strategization involved in supporting cultural, cognitive, and creative capital—the gifts endowed to humankind that enable our co-evolution with this specific regions of this planet. This research explores methods not only of maintaining the integrity of Indigenous voice through the process of research and reporting but also of using science as a tool for building community through a sense of critical Indigenous identity. It is my hope that the data contained in this research will serve as a relevant, without being transferable, model of progressive educational approaches to ameliorate science education on a local, national, and global scale. / Ph. D. / This research is communicated in a way that attempts to situate Indigenous worldview within the context of Western academic traditions. It explores methods of non-hierarchal and reciprocal research engagement. This is done for the purpose of blending theory and practice in real-time for the use of science education as a tool for community empowerment and environmental sustainability.

America's school-age population is experiencing a demographic shift. In 1972, students of color represented 22% of the school-age population; in 2005, minority students accounted for 33% of public school enrollment (Statistics, 2007 Villegas, 2002). This study sought to explore how these changing demographics affected University Town Community Schools, the district's interventions, and teachers' perceptions to those interventions. This study also explored teachers' feelings of efficacy when teaching minority students. Using a qualitative study among third-, fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade elementary school teachers, a random sample of 9 teachers from schools comprising a minority population of at least 40% were interviewed. Data analysis involved the use of themes that emerged from the interview data, observations, and quotations from participants. The findings indicated that the district acted on a school-by-school basis, with no specific actions to target any one racial group. Meanwhile, teachers were inconsistent when discussing race, behavior, and learning. Teachers felt comfortable assigning behaviors based on race and culture, but were hesitant to assign learning strengths and weaknesses based on race or culture.

Culturally responsive education has been an actual topic in teacher education for decades, but most teachers still finish their education without appropriate knowledge and skills for teaching in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. Providing quality education to diverse learners remains a challenge, particularly in the fields of mathematics and sciences. The purpose of this systematic literature review was to describe intervention programs preparing in-service and pre-service math and science teachers for teaching in culturally diverse classrooms, and the outcomes of such programs. A search for scholarly journals evaluating such intervention programs has been carried out in several databases, resulting in nine articles included in the analysis. Intervention programs described in these articles covered several important aspects of culturally relevant education and had a limited success in developing cultural responsiveness of teachers. The construct of culturally relevant education is complex and multi-layered, and thus hard to measure without simplifying it to measurable constructs. Limitations of the study and implications for the future research and practice are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors that impact teachers’ preparedness for and implementation of single-gender instructional strategies and culturally relevant pedagogy with African-American girls in single-gender classrooms. Three Single-Gender Academies were included in the study. Twenty participants responded to a teacher survey, nine teachers and two administrators were interviewed, and lesson plans from six of the teachers interviewed were also collected. Descriptive statistics, regression tests and Pearson’s Correlations were used to analyze quantitative data and displayed a significant relationship between professional development and teacher preparedness for and implementation of single-gender instructional strategies and culturally relevant pedagogy. A significant relationship also existed between teacher preparation program and teacher preparedness for implementing single-gender instructional strategies. No significant relationship was found between teacher demographics and teacher preparedness for and implementation of single-gender instructional strategies and culturally relevant pedagogy. Analysis of qualitative data revealed that certain teacher demographics did impact teacher preparedness for and implementation of single-gender instructional strategies and culturally relevant pedagogy for the teachers in this research investigation. Qualitative analysis of data provided evidence to support the quantitative findings about professional development and single-gender instructional strategies and culturally relevant pedagogy with African-American girls in single-gender classrooms. Moreover, analysis of qualitative data revealed that specific behaviors of administrators influenced teacher preparedness for and implementation of single-gender instructional strategies and culturally relevant pedagogy. Results of this research investigation provide implications and recommendations for school districts that incorporate single-gender classroom environments, faculty at Educational Departments at local universities and alternative teacher preparation programs and administrators that lead these schools.

This study identifies the components of an instructional programme for information literacy that is culturally relevant to Kuwaiti students. It discusses culturally relevant education, instruction for information literacy, the provision of library and information skills instruction in Kuwait, and its characteristics as an independent nation, and as a Gulf, Arab, Islamic, and developing country. The study further tests the effect of cultural relevance on instruction for information literacy for Kuwaiti students with an experiment of comparative instruction. The control group received Western-oriented instruction for information literacy and the experimental group received instruction that substituted Kuwaiti cultural referents for some of the Western-oriented referents. The aims of instruction for both groups were basic levels of proficiency as described in Information Literacy Standards for Student Learning, and the main vehicle of instruction was the Big SixTM information problem solving strategy. The only difference in instruction between groups were the images in the Big SixTM transparencies used for overhead projection, the examples used in class to discuss various information problems and the corresponding images that represented the examples. The study measured the information problem solving achievement of 126 fourth- and eighth grade students with a pre- post-test, the recall of the Big Six strategy with a post-test, and student attitudes with a questionnaire. The analyses revealed that, overall, there is a significant difference in the mean achievement scores in information problem solving and the recall of the Big Six strategy between students who received culturally relevant instruction and those who received instruction that was not culturally relevant. Examined separately, males' scores were significantly higher in the group that received culturally relevant instruction, while females responded equally well to both types of instruction. In addition, the study found a strong correlation between the attitudes of students in the control and experimental groups, and between males and females within groups.

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