Teachers' Perceptions of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and the Impact on Leadership Preparation: Lessons for Future Reform Efforts.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of one school's teacher driven professional development effort to address culturally responsive teaching practices in a large district in a Midwestern state. During the 2011 2012 school year, a team of teachers and principals began a three year long effort to provide job embedded professional development intended to focus on delivering high impact strategies to transform the educational practices of teachers through improving cultural competence. A survey was given to 120 fulltime certified teachers, and findings suggest that while teachers agreed most that the professional development helped examine views on poverty, they agreed least that the professional development helped close the achievement gap. Additionally, elective and special education teachers were significantly more positive than core subject classroom teachers in terms of how the research they read improved instruction and how the professional development provided impacted building wide faculty instruction. Analysis of open ended items highlight several themes, namely the professional development helped teachers by acknowledging cultural differences of the students they taught, but that ultimately the challenges of lack of time and implementation apathy impeded the success of the professional development effort. These findings provide important insight for leadership preparation, particularly about supporting teacher driven efforts, facilitating culturally responsive practices, and the reflecting on the pressures teachers face due to high stakes accountability and reform efforts.