Teacher_Ed_Brief - practitioner Brief Becoming culturally...

BECOMING CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE EDUCATORS:
RETHINKING TEACHER EDUCATION PEDAGOGY
CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS: EDUCATION FOR ALL
PRACTITIONER BRIEF

2
THE MISSION
OF THE NATIONAL
CENTER FOR
CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE
EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS
(NCCREST) IS TO SUPPORT
STATE AND LOCAL
SCHOOL SYSTEMS
TO ASSURE A
QUALITY, CULTURALLY
RESPONSIVE EDUCATION
FOR ALL STUDENTS.

3
BECOMING CULTURALLY
RESPONSIVE EDUCATORS:
RETHINKING TEACHER
EDUCATION PEDAGOGY
Dr. Cathy Kea, North Carolina A&T State University
Dr. Gloria D. Campbell-Whatley, University of North Carolina-Charlotte
Dr. Heraldo V. Richards, Austin Peay State University
©2006NCCREST

Despite the steadily increasing numbers of
culturally and linguistically diverse student
populations in schools, not all teacher
education programs (TEPs) readily
embrace multicultural education or
culturally responsive teacher education
pedagogy (Gay, 2002). This brief has a
twofold purpose: (a) to demonstrate the
need for rethinking current approaches to
teacher education pedagogy and (b) to
provide guidelines for developing culturally
responsive teacher education pedagogy.
WHAT ARE THE KEY
CHALLENGES RELATED TO
DIVERSITY IN TEACHER
EDUCATION PROGRAMS?
Some schools of education have acknowledged the
urgency for developing culturally competent
teachers, while others grapple with ways to fit
appropriate programs into their curriculum.
Unconvinced of the academic merits of culturally
responsive programming, but not wanting to appear
“anti-diversity,” some TEPs will grudgingly add a
diversity course to their curriculum. Overcoming
this resistance is crucial to developing effective
TEPs that will provide preservice teachers with the
knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to
educate diverse learners. A major part of the
resistance comes from teacher educators’
discomfort, if not fear of, addressing issues such as
race and racism in their courses, or even on their
campuses (Cochran-Smith, 2004). Resistance will
persist and children from ethnically and
linguistically diverse backgrounds will go unserved
until schools and faculty acknowledge the need for
culturally competent teachers in the classroom and
the responsibility of TEPs to properly prepare these
teachers. Coupled with this acknowledgement must
be a willingness to truly value and celebrate
diversity in programming and practices.
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE TO
CREATE TEPs THAT ARE
MINDFUL OF DIVERSITY?
Unfortunately, most preservice teachers lack the
knowledge, skills, dispositions, and experiences needed
to teach ethnically and linguistically diverse students.
Davis (2001) found only 12 empirical articles
pertaining to multicultural teacher preparation in
special education between 1982 and 2000, and the
studies reported limited ideas about diversity. Analysis
of these studies revealed that researchers often
limited ideas about culture to race and ethnicity.