The dramatic demographic shift occurring in this country makes it essential that our nation examines its policies, practices, and values as they relate to culturally diverse learners. That this student population remains underserved needs immediate attention. One arena that can become a part of the solution to the underachievement of diverse learners is teacher education and preparation programming.
The purpose of this research study was to give attention to this issue and to understand what an urban teacher education program (UTEP) with an educational equity and social justice mission does to prepare its secondary teacher candidates (STCs) to work successfully with diverse learners. An additional purpose was to determine what role culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) played in STC's perceptions of their readiness to work with our nation's ever-growing culturally diverse school-age learners.
Using a multi-phase mixed methods case study research design, data was collected from secondary teacher educators using interviews and artifacts as well as from secondary teacher candidates' pre-and-post Likert scale and open-ended responses to the Learning to Teach for Social Justice/Beliefs scale survey. This survey was adapted from the work of Ludlow, Enterline, and Cochran-Smith (2008).
I coded and analyzed the data to shed light on the following research questions: 1. What does an urban teacher education program do to operationalize it educational equity and social justice missions?
2. How do secondary teacher candidates' perceptions of their readiness to work with culturally diverse learners change from the beginning of their teacher education program to the end?
3. To what extent if any, is culturally responsive pedagogy associated with secondary candidates' perceptions of readiness?
The findings indicate that several factors influence teacher candidates' perceptions; reflection, critical consciousness of the educational landscape and a willingness to embrace diversity as it presents itself in the classroom were common among participants.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pdx.edu/oai:pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu:open_access_etds-5265 |
| Date | 09 April 2018 |
| Creators | Taylor, Rosalyn |
| Publisher | PDXScholar |
| Source Sets | Portland State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Dissertations and Theses |
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