While schools in America are becoming more culturally diverse, the majority of
first-year teachers continue to be white females. Although mentoring has proven to be an
effective means of supporting first-year teachers, little research has been done that
specifically addresses the first-year, white, female teacher’s perceptions of her
mentoring needs in teaching students of color. This qualitative research study examined
the experiences of eight, first-year, white, female teachers teaching students of color in a
large culturally diverse school district in Texas. Data were gathered over a period of 12
weeks. The participants’ responses were collected through individual interviews, focused
group interviews, and journal responses to five open-ended sentence stems. This
research is an “attempt” to examine these participants’ experiences because although
multiple attempts were made to engage the participants in substantial discussion about
their mentoring needs specifically related to being white teachers working with students
of color, the participants would not participate at depth in conversations about race or
culture. They did, though, discuss some of their mentoring needs, which were consistent
with the already existing literature on first-year teachers and their mentoring needs. Three themes however, emerged. They were the context of mentoring, evident
mentoring needs, and critical unrecognized mentoring needs. In the context of
mentoring, the participants’ mentoring experiences were examined. In the second theme,
the participants’ recognized mentoring needs were discussed. These included the
participants’ need for support in basic teaching skills and in managing their many
emotions during this time. The third theme highlighted the critical and unrecognized
needs of these first-year teachers to have an understanding of their own racial identity
and how this affects their responsiveness to the cultures of their students.
Recommendations were made for policy and practice so that pre-service teachers
are fully prepared to think and behave in ways that will meet the needs of a diverse
population of learners. These recommendations should be considered by all teachers.
Here, I specifically made recommendations that would benefit the population that was
the focus of this study, that of white first-year teachers who teach in culturally diverse
classrooms.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2052 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Attaway, Kathy Ann |
| Contributors | McKenzie, Kathryn Bell |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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