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Book Summary: Online education has become a prevalent means of program and course delivery, especially within teacher education programs. However, the lack of preparation in online design is concerning, especially in the field of teacher education where the focus is preparing preservice and practicing teachers to implement effective, evidence-based instructional strategies. Effective Practices in Online Teacher Preparation for Literacy Educators is an essential scholarly resource that shares innovative ideas for translating face-to-face reading/literacy specialist preparation into effective online instruction for courses in literacy education. Highlighting various topics such as instructional design, teacher education, and literacy assessment, this book is ideal for instructors, curriculum developers, instructional designers, IT specialists, education professionals, instructors, administrators, academicians, and researchers.

Public schools teachers in the U.S. strive to reach the needs of all students in the elementary classroom. However, teachers are increasingly expected to follow standardized curriculum. Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (Paris, 2012) pushes toward individualized educational practices and against the assimilationism embedded in standardization. This study considers the ways in which nine women-identified teachers, one Black, two Latina, six white, who teach elementary school in a Midwestern university town, experience, discuss, and implement Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy in a professional development course, specifically through the lens of the following question: In a course on culturally sustaining pedagogy, how do teachers experience race, culture, families, and family literacies? Grounded in empirical research that considers teaching and learning through a sociocultural lens, and in the theoretical scholarship of Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Pedagogy, the purpose of this qualitative, narrative inquiry is to describe teachers’ learning and responses to culturally sustaining pedagogical practices in order to understand this process and its implementation. Data for this qualitative inquiry were gathered over five months in a professional development course setting using the qualitative methods of observations, interviews, audio recordings, photographs, detailed field notes, and participant self-reflections. The data collected was analyzed through descriptive coding (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014), narrative analysis (Schaafsma & Vinz, 2011), and Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2015; Gee, 2014). Results from the study suggest that engagement in culturally sustaining practices is constrained by the standardizations of school, in addition to the discomfort and lack of knowledge of some teachers when talking about race and power in the elementary classroom. Findings also suggest that teachers’ explicit engagement with research and discussions regarding these constraints led to new culturally sustaining practices.

Global competence--a necessary attribute in an increasingly interconnected world--describes having the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to act creatively and collaboratively on important global issues. In urban settings comprised of racial, ethnic, and/or linguistic-minority students, especially, a logical but seemingly underutilized facilitator of global competence would be instruction that draws from students’ funds of knowledge--the home-based practices central to a household’s functioning and well-being. In response to a need for deepened insight into how these concepts may interact in practice, the goal of this qualitative study was to better understand the experience of urban teachers as global competence educators, specifically, the extent to which they consider and utilize their students’ funds of knowledge in developing global competence. In this study, 30 Boston area teachers were interviewed using a semi-structured protocol to draw out their understandings of students’ funds of knowledge and their awareness of how these funds of knowledge might be used to further the development of global competence. Data produced in this study were analyzed through a multi-phase thematic coding process. A conceptual framework built upon existing definitions of global competence and funds of knowledge was developed to inform the design and methodology of this study, and was used as a guide for viewing and understanding the produced data. The two major findings of this study were that: (1) teachers, while seemingly able and willing to talk about global competence and funds of knowledge in relation to their students, did not seem to synthesize (or speak about their synthesis of) these concepts in practice, and, (2) in teacher interviews, potential global competence-supporting funds of knowledge were most often recognized in immigrant and/or economically privileged White students. The potential global competence-supporting funds of knowledge possessed by non-immigrant, minority, and presumably, low-income students were not routinely recognized or accessed.

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Thesis advisor: Mariela Páez / In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated persistent educational inequities and added exponentially to the existing “education debt” (Ladson-Billings, 2006). Public schools’ sudden shift to remote learning marginalized a large population of students, including young bilingual children from immigrant backgrounds. These students are among the most vulnerable when it comes to remote learning not only because of accessibility issues, but also because many of these students’ families live in underserved and under-resourced communities that were negatively affected by the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and persistent systemic racism (Fortuna et al., 2020; Schmit et al., 2020). Hence, there is an urgent need to understand pandemic-related experiences of immigrant families with young bilingual children and to respond with educational strategies that strive to mitigate the negative effects of this educational crisis. This dissertation study comprised of three papers addresses this need through a collaborative project with 20 immigrant families with 42 young bilingual children and two community organizations from the Metro and Greater Boston Area. Paper 1 used sequential mixed methods to provide an in-depth account of immigrant families' remote learning experiences and investigate structural barriers such as lack of support and oppressive practices that hindered the establishment of home-school connections during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Paper 2 employed transformative mixed methods to document the development, implementation, and evaluation of a family engagement and remote learning program—the Home Connection. This program was firmly grounded in the equitable collaboration framework of family engagement to build a strong partnership with the family participants and to recognize the crucial roles of the families as co-designers, co-educators, co-researchers, and co-evaluators. Paper 3 is a practitioner inquiry reflecting on what I have learned as a teacher-researcher implementing culturally sustaining pedagogy to partner with immigrant families and teach young bilingual children from diverse backgrounds during pandemic remote learning. Findings from this dissertation documenting the struggles, resistance, and solidarity of these immigrant families will help inform educators, administrators, and policymakers in their planning and delivering of learning experiences and family engagement initiatives that center on the motivation, needs, and assets of diverse students and their families. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) is a framework designed to help traditionally marginalized students. Other frameworks have previously tried to draw on culture to help students in similar ways. However, Paris (2012b) claimed that the word sustaining enclosed a meaning of maintaining and enhancing these students' language and cultural practices that no other frameworks did until that point. There is some confusion for educators and others about CSP since it is a newer framework and that there are many of these cultural frameworks analyzing similar concepts. Therefore, the purpose of this literature review was to examine these previous main frameworks that Paris cited as influencing culturally sustaining pedagogies (i.e., funds of knowledge, culturally responsive pedagogy, culturally relevant pedagogy, and culturally responsive teaching) and how these frameworks overlap with the four main key features of CSP. These four key features are: (a) centering of dynamic communities, their valued languages, practices, and knowledge across the learning setting; (b) student and intergenerational community agency and input; (c) working to be in good relationship with the land, with students, and communities; and (d) structured opportunities to contend with internalized oppressions, false choices, and inward gazes (Paris, 2021). The level of emphasis of each key feature by the main frameworks was also highlighted. Findings illustrate that the first CSP key feature was the most predominant since it was found in all previous frameworks. On top of that, the main framework that has influenced CSP the most is Culturally Relevant Pedagogy by Ladson-Billings since the four CSP features were represented in this framework.

For African Americans, literacy has historically been rooted in passion, collaboration, and social justice. This study explores two distinct sites of historical African American literacy development: literary societies of the 1800s and print culture of the Harlem Renaissance. Notably, literacy and culture were fundamentally intertwined during these times, creating an urgency and inspiration for literary pursuits not often seen today. In an effort to rekindle this reverence and utility for literacy in classrooms today, a culturally sustaining pedagogy is called for. Culturally sustaining pedagogy seeks to leverage students’ cultural knowledge and skills. By culturally aligning curriculum and instruction, educators position students to experience the transformative power of literacy—a transformative power that was evident in African American literary societies and through the Harlem Renaissance print culture. This study seeks to merge historical and contemporary approaches to literacy development to reconceptualize literacy education and engagement for all students.

As the student population in U.S. public schools becomes more diverse, with an increase of students of color and from low socioeconomic backgrounds, it is critical that the opportunity gaps in our education system are addressed to provide an equitable education for urban youth. To mitigate these gaps, there is a need for an experienced urban teacher workforce, but urban schools face staffing challenges that make this difficult. There is an exceptional need for Latina/o teachers, who demonstrate positive impacts on Latina/o students, the largest minority population nationwide, however, the retention rate amongst Latina/o teachers is lower than that of other demographics. This phenomenological qualitative research study explored the personal and professional factors that sustain Latina veteran urban teachers in a predominantly Latina/o school district through the development of testimonios. Data was collected through a survey, instructional documents, and interviews to produce the individual testimonios of each participant’s history as a Latina veteran urban teacher and a cross-case analysis of the participants’ shared experiences. The findings demonstrated that Latina veteran urban teachers possessed la chispa, the spark, for serving students who share their cultural and linguistic identity. These teachers ignited, fueled, and preserved their chispa through various personal and professional factors, including a commitment to serving urban students, a dedication to continuous professional growth, and the support from personal and professional networks. These findings can inform teacher preparation programs and school systems on how to prepare and sustain Latina teachers for long-term careers in urban education.

Minoritized students in public schools in Texas and across the nation continue to underachieve academically compared to their white peers. Despite similar academic achievement and socioeconomic backgrounds, minoritized students are often perceived more negatively by a predominantly white teacher workforce. The idea of cultural dissonance or mismatch between teachers and their students has led to the development of pedagogical frameworks such as culturally responsive teaching (CRT) that seek to bridge this cultural gap. This embedded multiple case study examined the perceptions, lived experiences, and level of preparedness of four school principals and one assistant superintendent in a white-majority school district with rapidly changing demographics. My findings support previous studies that show the limited resources and continued failure of universities and school systems in building educator capacity in culturally responsive school leadership CRSL. Furthermore, culturally responsive and visionary leaders may be more critical than previously thought due to school systems imbued with the dominant white culture and its deeply ingrained stereotypical views towards minoritized individuals. Despite these findings, my study also provides compelling evidence that meaningful relationships and diverse experiences alone can play an important role in fomenting and enhancing individuals' cultural proficiency, regardless of their racial/ethnic background. Finally, the implications of these findings are discussed in detail, followed by recommendations.