USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications
Preservice Teachers’ Developing Understandings about Culturally Responsive Teaching in a Field-Based Writing Methods Course,
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2010
Abstract
I investigated eight preservice teachers’ understandings about culturally responsive pedagogy as they participated in a writing methods course in which they tutored children from different ethnic, socioeconomic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds in an afterschool program at a local community center. I also investigated how these preservice teachers demonstrated culturally responsive teaching within the writing curriculum. I recognized the need for research relevant to my own personal beliefs and how to strive for more equitable schools. I want to contribute further to the understandings and insights related to culturally responsive pedagogy. According to the literature, it appears teachers remain unprepared to teach children from diverse populations many of whom continue to fall behind academically. Insufficient information exists in the literature regarding attitudes and understandings of preservice teachers about culturally responsive pedagogy. I utilized a qualitative design, in particular an embedded case study to gain an understanding of a smaller part of the larger case. The larger case was the entire community center, preservice teachers, course instructor, and the elementary students. Data included individual and focus group interviews, course documents, reflections, field notes, and a reflexive journal. I chose constant comparison analysis to find themes within all of the data. I then used within-case analysis to more deeply examine the themes found in the data. In order to gain understanding of these discoveries being relevant to other cases, I employed a cross-case analysis. After multiple readings of the data, carefully analyzing the data through coding and categorizing themes, the following five themes emerged: 1) cultural awareness and integration, 2) student-teacher interaction, 3) influence of the field experience, 4) questions and conversations, and 5) best practices for teaching writing. I also recommend effective aspects of the field experience, which facilitated preservice teachers’ development of deeper understandings about culturally responsive pedagogy as they confronted their conscious and unconscious beliefs. The effective facets in the field experience included one-on-one student teacher interaction, scaffolding critical reflection, and use of best practices in culturally responsive writing instruction.
Publisher
University of South Florida
Recommended Citation
Bennett, S. V. (December, 2010). Preservice Teachers’ Developing Understandings about Culturally Responsive Teaching in a Field-Based Writing Methods Course, University of South Florida. Graduate School Theses and Dissertations. Paper 3577.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
