Developing Diversity Dispositions for White Culturally Responsive TeachersSan Jose State University Library

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Title:Developing Diversity Dispositions for White Culturally Responsive Teachers.

Authors:Edwards, Sarah1, skedwards@unomaha.edu

Source:Action in Teacher Education; 2011 Yearbook, Vol. 33 Issue 5/6, p493-508, 16p

Document Type:Article

Subjects:Teacher education; Educators; Urban schools; Teaching; Teacher educators

Abstract:As teacher education programs continue to search for ways to prepare future educators for the challenges and the joys of urban schools, this research seeks to provide specific ways for teacher candidates to build on their professional dispositions to build strong relationships through specific culturally appropriate teaching strategies. The author suggests a key starting place is for teacher educators to define and describe the critical elements necessary to develop relationships that are essential to successful schooling. Themes such as interaction, ownership, and accommodation provide the basis for teacher candidates to develop relationships through professional dispositions of culturally responsive teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

 Copyright of Action in Teacher Education is the property of Association of Teacher Educators and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Author Affiliations:1University of Nebraska, Omaha

Full Text Word Count:8476

ISSN:01626620

DOI:10.1080/01626620.2011.627038

Accession Number:71524029

Database:Education Full Text (H.W. Wilson)

Developing Diversity Dispositions for White Culturally Responsive Teachers

Contents

1. RELEVANT LITERATURE 2. DEVELOPING CULTURAL COMPETENCE 3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS 4. METHOD 5. DISCUSSION 6. CONCLUSION 7. TABLE 1 Interview Protocol 8. REFERENCES

As teacher education programs continue to search for ways to prepare future educators for the challenges and the joys of urban schools, this research seeks to provide specific ways for teacher candidates to build on their professional dispositions to build strong relationships through specific culturally appropriate teaching strategies. The author suggests a key starting place is for teacher educators to define and describe the critical elements necessary to develop relationships that are essential to successful schooling. Themes such as interaction, ownership, and accommodation provide the basis for teacher candidates to develop relationships through professional dispositions of culturally responsive teaching.

Teacher education courses and programs are dedicated to developing the knowledge and understandings of our nation's future teacher work force. Although many programs debate the most effective means for developing teacher candidates, perhaps the most critical component of that discussion is how to provide for teacher candidate development in theory and practice. To meet this challenge, many states and teacher preparation institutions have adopted standards from the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC; 2011) and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE: 2002).

These standards reflect a notion of effective teaching that includes teacher knowledge, skills, and dispositions for teaching. Although knowledge and skills have long been included in the description of effective teaching, the inclusion of dispositions is relatively new. Dispositions have been defined as values, commitments, or ethics that are internally held and externally exhibited (Cudahy, Finnan, Jaruszewicz, & McCarty, 2002). Having a "disposition to teach" in today's society includes having the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to teach to and about the diversity in our nation's classrooms.

However, two disparities challenge this goal must be acknowledged and confronted. The first challenge centers on the disparity that exists between the racial/ethnic backgrounds of our nation's students and the racial/ethnic backgrounds of our nation's teachers. Gay and Howard (2000) interpreted U.S. Department of Education statistics to suggest the trend that the percent of teachers

who are African American declining from 12% in 1970 to 7% in 1998 and the percent of teachers who are Latino/a remaining relatively stable below 5%. With 86% of our 3.6 million nation's P-12 teachers coming from White backgrounds (Digest of Education Statistics, 2006), and the percent of our nation's students of color projected to be 39% by 2020, it is difficult to suggest our nation's teachers will soon reflect the diversity of our nation's students (National Center for Education Statistics, 2007). Until there is racial representation in our teaching population, teacher-educator programs must consider ways to provide tools to our White teachers to adequately meet the needs of our nation's students.

The second challenge focuses on the disparity between the theories supporting culturally responsive teaching (Gay, 2000) and the practices that many teacher-educators model and many teacher candidates demonstrate as the "disposition to teach" to and about diversity. Gay (2000) described culturally responsive teaching as a means for unleashing the potential of ethnically diverse students by exploring the academic and psychosocial abilities of the students. Although most universities and colleges require diversity education, research in the area of the effectiveness of diversity training is only emerging, at best. Teacher-educators presently lack a definitive body of knowledge regarding the constructs that define good teachers in general, and competent teachers of culturally diverse students in particular (Garcia, 2002). Despite a repeated call for more inclusion, teacher candidates are still leaving their preparation programs without the skills, knowledge, or dispositions needed to work with all of their future students (Jones & Fuller, 2003).

Minimal research attention has been directed toward the dispositions of teacher candidates. In particular, research on the dispositional issues of cultural responsiveness and significant relationships is limited. To meet the demands of the mismatch between our culturally diverse students and our "culturally insular" (Feiman-Nemser & Remillard, 1996) teachers, research must consider the issues of developing significant relationships and culturally responsive teaching for teacher candidates. By examining these elements of effective teaching, classroom teachers, teacher educators, and policy makers can better prepare our teacher candidates as highly qualified teachers for the classrooms of today and tomorrow.

RELEVANT LITERATURE

To consider the issues of developing professional dispositions in teacher preparation programs, issues of significant relationships and cultural competence must be examined. A review of literature related to the significance of relationships in the classroom, the definition of professional dispositions, and the development of cultural competence is presented here.

Relationships

Next to parents, teachers are the single most influential factor in the lives of children (Hernandez, 2001; Sleeter & Grant, 1999). It is believed that the personal characteristics of the classroom teacher, as judged by people and communication skills, personal beliefs about minorities, and the ability to engage in multicultural reflection and self-analysis are the most significant correlate of preparing competent teacher candidates in diversity education (Blair, 2003; Grant & Gomez, 2001; Jennings & Smith, 2002; Jones & Fuller, 2003; Pang, 2001).

Several studies have examined the role of students' relationships with teachers, parents, and peers as predictors of academic performance. Close relationships are critical for the development of skills in adolescents (Collins & Laursen, 2004). Anderson, Christenson, Sinclair, and Lehr (2004) suggested that struggling students, particularly those students whose homes contrast starkly with the school environment, need a strong bond to the school and the school staff. Similarly, Furrer and Skinner (2003) argued that relationships in the classroom are a central element to a student's willingness to participate in classroom activities.

Chesebro and McCroskey (2001) suggested a strong relationship between students and the teacher is marked by clarity of instruction and teacher availability. Other contributors to a strong teacher-student relationship include the use of humor (Torok, McMorris, & Lin, 2004), student self-regulated learning (Perry, VandeKamp, Mercer, & Nordby, 2002), and a teacher-directed, caring learning environment (Klein & Connell, 2004). Clearly, relationships are central to success in the classroom for the teacher and the student. The development of significant professional relationships relies on the teacher having professional dispositions.

Dispositions

As Taylor and Wasicsko (2000) pointed out, "It is important for teacher educators to know and understand the dispositions of effective teachers, so as to design experiences that will help develop these characteristics in teacher candidates and to assist teacher candidates in discovering if they have the 'dispositions to teach' " (p. 2). Usher (2002) defined dispositions as "the qualities that characterize a person as an individual: the controlling perceptual (mental, emotional, spiritual) qualities that determine the person's natural or usual ways of thinking and acting" (p. 7). A similar definition by Freeman (2004) capitalizes on the critical thinking aspect of dispositions in that "a disposition consists of value or belief, an intention or desire that the value or belief be actualized, and the skills or knowledge necessary to give reality to the intention" (p. 34).

Although these definitions vary in the importance they place on the balance between thoughts and actions, there is a significant body of research indicating that teachers' dispositions strongly influence the impact they will have on student learning and development (Collinson, Killeavy, & Stephenson, 1999).

Collinson et al. (1999) concluded that effective teaching goes beyond traditional ideas of skills and knowledge to include dispositions. Their analysis of effective teaching suggests that "what makes excellent teachers recognizable may be a combination of competence, skillful relationships, and character" (p. 7). Stronge (2002) reviewed decades of research to define effective teacher behaviors as caring, fairness, and respect; enthusiasm and motivation; reflective practice; positive attitude toward teaching; and friendly and personal interactions with students. Stronge's analysis of the research supports Collinson et al.'s suggestion that dispositions are related to personal attributes and the quality of one's ability to develop significant relationships with other people.

Dispositions, as an element of teacher excellence, may also be contextual. Haberman's (1995) work supports the notion that the dispositions required to teach effectively in schools with populations of predominately at-risk students would be substantially different from those dispositions required to

teach effectively in schools with populations from middle- to upper-income families. Thus, the research on defining and describing dispositions must include issues of culturally competence.

DEVELOPING CULTURAL COMPETENCE

Moving one's beliefs from theory into practice is difficult, even for the most experienced teacher. One common critique of teacher preparation programs is that teacher candidates are often left to assume how to place theoretical concepts into action in their future classrooms. Perhaps the first step in developing such reflective teachers is to help teacher candidates examine their own identities in relation to other people (Zeichner, 1996). When these teachers can know themselves and their place in the scheme of schooling, they may be better suited to look outside of themselves to understand the experiences of other people.

One possible way to teach teacher candidates about themselves and their students is to provide structured field experiences to explore diversity. Through experiences such as these onsite opportunities, teacher candidates can begin to see themselves in more detail and, therefore, begin to get a clearer picture of their students. Although the development of reflective practitioners is not new to education, this type of thinking does not often reach into the arena of specific strategies teacher candidates use to talk about their teaching in diverse settings. During reflection, teacher candidates often rely on "simplification strategies" (Rees, 2000) to explain how they might enact their diversity beliefs, rather than being able to fully describe how these beliefs might be observed in the classroom.

Dee and Henkin (2002) suggested that though many factors may shape teacher beliefs, when it comes to cultural diversity understanding and acceptance, those teachers exposed early and exposed often and authentically to a range of cultural diversity, whether it be through informal friendships and relationships or through learning opportunities that support and reinforce certain social interaction attitudes, are most likely to become culturally responsive or at least have their teacher beliefs challenged into being more equitable. As Dee and Henkin (2002), went on to point out, "In contrast, tendencies to avoid social contact with culturally different others represent personal constraints and are limiting factors in professional practice" (p. 32).

Minimal research attention has been directed toward helping teacher candidates place developing beliefs into action. Often, it is assumed that teacher candidates leave the preparation programs with the knowledge to enact the skills necessary to place their ideas into action. This outcome is simply not often the case. This research study examines the experiences of five teacher candidates as they move through the process of developing relationships through professional dispositions of culturally responsive teaching.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The two research questions guiding this study were:

1. What is culturally responsive teaching for teacher candidates as they move through a field experience in an urban setting?

2. What is relationship building as a component of professional dispositions for teacher candidates as they move through a field experience in an urban setting?

METHOD

The framework guiding this research was the constructivist interpretive paradigm (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994). This research consisted of an interpretive qualitative case study of five teacher candidates (Merriam, 1998). Narrative research design fits this study as it provides a lens for exploring an educational issue by collecting and telling the stories of individuals and by discussing the meaning of those experiences for the participants (Creswell, 2005). Qualitative inquiry fit this study as it looks deeply at the process of the participant's discovering evolving definitions and realities of the concept of culturally responsive teaching. Qualitative case study, in particular, gives voice to those individuals undergoing the discovery or realization of their voices.

Participants

The preparation of teachers at this urban midwestern university is based on a traditionally sequenced curriculum approach. Teacher candidates begin their higher education in basic programs that include survey courses from the liberal arts followed by skills, knowledge, and field experiences presented during the professional sequence. Specific content courses in the major area(s) are next in the sequenced curriculum, and the culminating experience is student teaching. The five participants in this study had completed all coursework except the student teaching experience. As part of the specific-content pedagogy course based on language arts methods, these five teacher candidates engaged in 40 hours of field experiences in urban secondary school language arts classrooms. Data were gathered during this semester-long field placement.

Prior to contacting the participants, the proposed study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the midwestern university. A copy of this proposal and a sample consent form was provided to the participants prior to their participation. The five teacher candidates were asked to participate in the research as a purposeful sampling of convenience. They were selected after the researcher read their personal narratives expressing interest in learning more about the role of culture in teaching.

The researcher was the instructor of the language arts methods course and offered the participants the opportunity to participate in the research in exchange for learning more about the role of culture in education. Specifically, the teacher candidates were offered the benefits of becoming aware of appropriate ways to teach in a diverse classroom, becoming aware of the challenges and rewards of working with diverse learners, and better understanding their own cultural backgrounds and the impact this culture may have on their decisions in the classroom.

Of the five participants, four were female and one was male. The four women were nontraditional teacher candidates between ages 30 and 45, and the one male was a 22-year-old traditional student. All five of the participants were White and identified themselves in their first interview as middle class on a socioeconomic scale. Each of the participants was student teaching in a secondary school classroom; no two participants were student teaching at the same school.

Site

Each of the five secondary schools was part of a large urban school district with a population of more than 48,000 students with 63% of the students qualifying for the free and reduced lunch program. The district is racially diverse with a population distribution of 49% White, 31% African

American, 17% Hispanic, 2% Asian American, and 1% Native American. Each of the student teacher's cooperating teachers was selected from a list provided by the school district's language arts coordinator. Following a discussion between the language arts coordinator and the researcher on the topic of culturally responsive teaching, the coordinator created a list of teachers who had reputations for including students' cultures in their teaching practices. In addition, the researcher asked the coordinator to identify each teacher's strengths and reputation in the school district. Using this list, the researcher contacted each of the perspective cooperating teachers and conducted brief phone interviews to determine if the cooperating teacher was willing to host a teacher candidate participating in the research study.

Data Collection

Multiple data sources were used to ensure a rich data pool and triangulation. Data sources collected over a 6-month period included personal narratives, individual interviews, and reflective journals. These data sources were designed to help the teacher candidates examine their beliefs of culturally relevant teaching in respect to building professional relationships in the classroom.

The personal narrative was centered on the philosophy of needing to know oneself before considering others (Gomez & Tabachnick, 1992). Based in the ideas of narrative as knowledge (Carter, 1993; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Knowles & Holt-Reynolds, 1991), this data source was designed to ask the teacher candidates to consider cultural issues from their own educational experiences. Each paper was approximately five pages of a biographical timeline of events and people who the candidate identified as having affected the candidate's desire to enter the teaching profession. Each candidate was asked to consider events or people who help to tell his or her personal education story. Because these were the first data gathered, the primary purpose was to provide the researcher with background information on the candidate's perspectives regarding teaching and learning. In particular, these open-ended narratives helped the researcher draft the first level of interviews. For example, one candidate mentioned a teaching family member, so I was able to ask about that influence in the interview process.

Individual interviews were conducted using a three-tiered foundation based on Seidman's (1998) approach to interviews (see Table 1). All of the interviews were audiotaped and later transcribed for analysis. The total time for each of the three interviews per participant was approximately 5 hours. The first interview focused primarily on each participant's life history, which included early schooling experiences and family beliefs regarding diversity. This interview lasted approximately 90 minutes and was used to paint a picture of each participant's educational and personal history. This initial interview also created the pathway for the subsequent interviews.

The second interview concentrated on the details of what was being observed and experienced during each candidate's fieldwork. Ideas appearing in the initial interview and culturally responsive teaching practices as identified by Ladson-Billings (1994) were used to generate interview questions. Using each participant's own definitions of culturally relevant teaching as determined by

the use of the reflective journals, each participant was asked to discuss how he or she intended to enact culturally responsive pedagogy.

The third interview provided each participant the opportunity to reflect on the intellectual and emotional meanings of the participant's life experiences and current fieldwork observations.

The seven reflective journal entries for each candidate were modeled after the research on the use of reflective thinking with student teachers (Kettle & Sellars, 1996; Zeichner & Liston, 1987).

The candidates used these journal entries to "talk through" their ideas and question their perspectives. The guiding prompts for each journal entry focused on early perceptions of culturally relevant teaching, definitions and documentation of culturally relevant teaching, and projections of culturally relevant teaching. Structuring the journals around what they thought they would see in the classroom, how their experiences aligned with culturally relevant teaching principles, and then how the experience might affect their future teaching provided candidates with multiple opportunities to consider the issues self-identified during fieldwork.

Data Analysis

Constant comparative method (Strauss, 1990) was employed for the data analysis of this research. This method of analysis is widely used in naturalistic studies and requires a constant comparing of previously coded data to newly acquired data. Data analysis began with the very first set of identified categories (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996) and continued as the initial categories were refined into consolidated themes. The stages (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994) of category coding, refinement of categories, exploration of the relationships across categories, and the understandings of the integrated data helped identify the meanings from within the data sources. Then these themes were applied and examined in context as initial experience themes during each participant's field experience.

Identified categories. The early data analysis began by reading the personal narratives to identify the participants' preconceived notions in the area of diversity. The researcher read and recorded initial impressions in the margins. Notes at this time included examples of being in culturally different settings as well as being aware of other cultures. After looking for similarities across the candidate's narratives, statements, or words of significance were written in the margins of the data set. Then the researcher read and recorded more marginal notes for the rest of the first set of data, the first interview, and the seven reflective journal entries written to describe expectations, analyze actual events, and document future implications of culturally relevant teaching. For example, the candidates were making statements that the researcher categorized as "high expectations" in the margins of the data. The candidates were able to identify elements of academic excellence, cultural competence, and critical consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 1994) in simplified ways. The coding at this point was to summarize the candidates' perceptions by making summary notes of the expectations and experiences of the candidates as they analyzed examples of culturally relevant teaching in the classroom.

This first data set was reread a second time and coded to find descriptive passages that referred to major concepts found in the data. Finding these passages and breaking apart the data was conducted

in accordance to Strauss' (1990) concept of open coding in that the researcher found ideas and concepts that were repetitious and descriptive.

Next the researcher employed the concept of unitizing (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) in each coded section to determine if the data set could stand on its own as a clearly understandable unit. Then these units were given a word or phrase that would identify the basic meaning of the unit. Units that resembled each other were grouped as documents under the heading that identified what the units had in common.

For example, the candidates identified examples of the many ways teachers worked with their students to build relationships. After looking at all of the units that had a common idea of teachers building a personal relationship with their students, the researcher identified the common descriptive word for these units as interaction and sorted all of these interaction units from the rest of the data. To member check the data, each candidate reviewed the data during the third interview to check for accuracy of the marginal notes as well as the summary notes. Few suggested changes were made to the categories at this time and changes that were made were made for the sake of clarity, such as changing my word reflection to consideration.

Data analysis. At this point the researcher used a process called axial coding (Strauss, 1990) to cluster similar statements. The researcher started reviewing the data and placing each item into an appropriate category according to these initial categories. With the identified categories now clustered together to form consolidated categories, themes demonstrated the participants' thinking.

Analytic induction was used to develop the consolidated themes gained by reading the participant's journal entries in response to working in diverse settings. Additionally, these themes were developed further during the second interview, which discussed teaching strategies connected to each of the consolidated themes. Clarification of the themes was gained from the third interview and subsequent journal entries written to capture a response to these themes. Finally, relationships were explored across the categories by using analytic induction to identify and track the relationships.

Descriptions of Culturally Relevant Teaching

Three themes of interaction, ownership, and accommodation were identified as central to each participant's descriptions of culturally relevant teaching as the basis for developing relationships in the classroom. The identified themes corroborated research findings that suggest educators must move beyond the tokenism of ethnic festivals and foods toward a "transformative approach" required at the personal and institutional levels (Banks, 2003).

Interaction. Interaction was the starting point for developing relationships in the classroom. Each of the five participants (Cathy, Beth, Rhonda, Julia, and Tim) mentioned interaction as a basic building block for communication. For Cathy, becoming an effective teacher meant getting to know students on an individual basis and resisting the temptation to generalize. Meaningful interaction was key to Beth's description as it provided a channel for the teacher to get to know students and a means for the teacher to respect students. The ultimate goal for Rhonda was to motivate students to become more involved in designing their own educational experience. The first step in setting up this type of interactive classroom is for the teacher to learn about his or her students.

Beth suggested that the task of learning students' individual personalities and cultures must be conducted on a one-on-one interactive basis and not from information provided in a cumulative folder. In thinking about how she might create that opportunity, Beth suggested the number one reason teachers lose control of their classes is not knowing their students:

I never liked it when people say, "I know that they are coming from [x] background." You don't know that they are coming from [a particular] background … You don't know anything - period - until you talk to that child … I can look at my not having their ethnicity as a drawback or I can look at they not having mine as something else I can (share with] them.

Beth looked forward to sharing her own cultural history while listening to students explain their backgrounds. She placed emphasis on a true sharing of information rather than her looking up their races as they had been reported to the school and making judgments based on preexisting student profiles.

Another segment of interaction that Tim identified as an element of building relationships is the need to address behaviors of the students. In addressing student behaviors rather than assuming student membership in visible groups, Tim believed that teachers are best able to learn about the students as they see themselves. He also suggested that self-identification is relevant in terms of group membership.

Julia believed that a third ingredient of interaction is found in transactional methods of teaching. When the teacher knows the student and has learned firsthand about the student through proper assessment, the teacher can now engage in transactional teaching. Julia defined this style of teaching as positively "exploiting students' prior knowledge and acknowledging different student interests and learning styles." Julia suggested that, before a teacher can draw on student knowledge, the teacher must know the student, trust that there's something there, and know what's there to be drawn out.

In furthering her thinking of how this type of transactional style values the student's knowledge, Julia remarked that the teacher "probably sees more of it as getting what's already there out of them. She's not giving them vocabulary lists and telling them to use them. She's not giving forward; she's drawing out what's there." Julia mentioned that this type of teaching sees students as authorities not only in the teacher's eyes but also in the eyes of the other students.

The final area of interactive and culturally relevant teaching noted as an element of a significant relationship is providing choice for the students. Rhonda recalled one event when students were allowed to pick their own material for a book review. Some students were encouraged to write creative stories utilizing various songs, pictures, or photos that appealed to them most. Even the students' purposes and activities for the day were explained in terms of choice.

Rhonda believed there are several reasons why providing choice is a culturally relevant practice. First of all, it allows a student to, "decide for himself [or herself] with whom and what he [or she] identifies. Too many times I've seen well-meaning but simplistic teachers suggest Maya Angelou to Black girls or Sandra Cisneros to Hispanic ones without any basis firmer than a shared skin color." Giving the students choices provides the opportunity for the students to select the work with which they most identify.

The most important component Cathy sees in choice is the opportunity to acknowledge, "There are a number or sources of authority, knowledge and experience outside the traditionally espoused ones." The teacher is not the only source of information. It's somewhat related to the first point in that students are helping to construct their own educational experience by establishing the validity of alternative choices. With exposure to choices, students reach actualization at earlier stages.

Beth soon noticed the element of responsibility carried over in the classroom among the students themselves. She once overheard students asking one another for assistance related to spelling and procedures: "Anyone who's seen a mob around a teacher can appreciate the benefits for teachers as well as students." This type of classroom creates an atmosphere of ownership and shared responsibility for students.

Ownership. Julia believed that when she knows her students and has set up patterns for interaction to occur, ownership is the next natural step in developing a professional relationship. Ownership relies on the teacher knowing the students and drawing knowledge out of them instead of simply giving it to them. Julia believed this type of ownership is "empowering for students and reinforces what they may or may not be hearing at home or from other teachers." The message is that education is their responsibility. Julia suggested that this message is not voiced equally as loud by different socioeconomic groups but needs to be heard. Personal ownership builds a classroom community that takes another form of ownership called knowledge.

For example, Rhonda described watching her cooperating teacher have students rate other students' papers according to a district rubric with very specific illustrations of each point value. For Rhonda, this is a great way to foster culturally relevant teaching because it "forces all the students to take ownership of evaluation; the grade is not simply a reflection of one person - the teacher's - ideas." These procedures also are consistent with giving students the opportunities to assume a role of authority and to view each other as peers.

Tim suggested that a critical piece of ownership was the element of community as a need to care about each other and to acknowledge that the members are all in a struggle together. This type of environment is important to Tim in establishing what he calls a great classroom. He cautions, however, that the idea that "we're all going to act together and be together and think together and do together and reach the same levels of achievement" does not fit his definition of community. Cathy echoed his thinking as identified in her reflective journals:

We need to know each other, feel like a team so that when we need this done we can look to the people who do that well and we know they're going to do it well … I think it's more about getting to know each other and working as a team so that you can rely on the people who are stronger than you in certain areas for assistance.

For Cathy, this sense of classroom community also extended to a definition of the larger community and the students' places in it. She believed that it must be a teacher's objective to motivate students to understand and see more of the world around them and to "see their community as one part of the concentric circles." Again, community building and awareness must be based on the student's own selected communities, Cathy added,

So much of culture is invisible you can't presume that because a kid is Black that is the most important part of his identity to him. He could be a big skateboarder and have more in common with the surf kids from San Diego than the West Indian kid sitting in the back row.

A final area of ownership that the five participants identified was the issue of trust. The first part of Beth's trust definition is based in the notion that there is a history that builds in the classroom and this history sets up a trust between and among students and teacher. Just as a teacher's beliefs may be challenged in a culturally responsive classroom, so might a student's belief. The students know that the teacher will give accurate and appropriate feedback to students because there is a standard of quality and trust to maintain.

A teacher must be trusted so that students will engage in taking risks. As Julia explained, "Not trusting your own perspectives is scary, even when you can recognize that those perceptions may not have been arrived at through careful examination." Julia believed that, "There is no particular detail of defense that can safely be challenged without undermining a larger, more fundamental institutional belief in family, ethnic identity, or religious identity." Until there is an honest consideration on the part of the teacher candidate of how a student fits into the classroom community and the larger community, the student will have no real ownership of his or her education.

Accommodation. In addition to interaction and ownership, the participants identified accommodating student needs as a crucial part of using culturally relevant teaching as a means of developing relationships. For Cathy, accommodation fell in line with the other areas as a natural progression. She believed, "If you do focus on knowing your students, letting them own what's there and letting that guide it, how the students give you that participation should provide the perfect forum for a variety of learning styles." This makes sense to her "because you share what's comfortable for you to share. You're going to articulate it the way that it's comfortable for you to articulate."

Seeing accommodations that fit student needs is also, for Beth, tied to the teacher's objective to teach "the kids about the world." Just as the teacher wishes to mine the material from the students and show them their place in the various rings of community, it is the teacher's job to learn how those students fit into the community. As a teacher you must take the time and opportunity to identify different learning styles, to recognize that there are five different learning styles in the classroom. Resistant teachers avoid having to "concern themselves with writing five different types of assessment or working a choice of how to provide an answer." This type of accommodation had four different components that include valuing individuals, seeing differences, changing expectations, and explicit communication.

The first component of accommodation is for students to be valued. Cathy explained that for her, there is a real difference between knowing that people are individuals and appreciating elements that make them unique. Cathy explained that we must learn to appreciate students and families who come from the culture of poverty when the students' culture is different than that of middle-class Whites. Julia acknowledged that there are some parents who, for one reason or another, may or may not be good role models for youth. She explained that "regardless of how distanced I am from a situation or a person there has to be something in it or them that I can appreciate." This

connection to the individual is measured in how you choose to express that appreciation, not the fact that this part of their personality is noteworthy. When the teacher is able to look carefully at his or her students, then that teacher is seeing what makes that person an individual.

Seeing the individual feeds into Rhonda's description of being able to see differences as they exist. In thinking about how there is a standard to which students are held, Rhonda explained, "I get the whole standardized test thing … that you want students to be able to succeed to the same levels." Where this thinking was problematic for Rhonda is that she believed "There are these real differences. If you look for everyone to have the same levels of achievement, to participate the same amount, to participate in the same way then you're not seeing real differences that exist." Tim argued that it's not an issue of predetermination for certain students or groups. He stated that, "It gets back to that whole difference between fair and equal, and I think that [being] culturally relevant is [being] fair, not equal. This is looking for there to be one type of student. That's not appreciating diversity."

As part of her explanation, Julia referenced the culture in schools that "A is great but you describe C as average, but God forbid a kid be average." This type of judgment comes from the presupposition that everyone is going to college. Beth has taken what she described as "the unpopular position in the college of education" of saying not every kid is going to college and that not all of them will want to attend.

Rhonda explained that in thinking about each student it is crucial that the teacher consider culture as a way to see differences. As she described in a reflective journal, "If you don't prize culture, if you don't see your own culture being a tool, if you don't see the students' culture as being a tool, then your teaching doesn't leave much room for alternate explanations or interpretations."

Rhonda went on to say that the teacher who does not value culture would not believe that there are multiple realities rather than just one correct perspective. Each participant mentioned the need for teachers to change their expectations. The problem, according to Julia, with believing in just one perspective is that, "You treat all of your students exactly the same … I think that the people who say 'I'm going to treat all of them the same' are probably the people who are going to wind up having the biggest problems because they're discounting actual real differences."

In addition to looking at patterns of discourse, Julia felt it was important to examine her expectations of students. She used the example of how students are told that schooling is equivalent to a having a job. Julia said, "There's so much made about … being a student is your job and it's just like a grownup when they have to do their job well. Kids hear that so many times, and I think it is such a lie." In comparison to the world of work, students are expected to conform rather than find creative and unique ways to deliver a finished product.

The final component of accommodation is explicit instruction essential to equity and effectiveness in serving a diverse class. Students must be explicit in describing what they need so the teacher can focus the student's behavior and assess how that student is progressing in reaching

that goal. Tim explained that, "I know there's a school of thought that prefers to keep kids in the dark about assessment - "If they're good students, they'll be prepared for whatever I ask" - but I think that's very outdated." This type of thinking doesn't accommodate students whose cultural

backgrounds or prior schooling haven't prepared them for the variety of testing methods teachers might use. Teachers might view such methods (i.e., true/false questions) as 'normal' and see no particular issues with them:

There are cultural values placed on being able to see shades of gray. Students from those cultures would be at a severe disadvantage answering a question that forces them to see it as either black or white. Telling a class what they have to know but not how they're going to demonstrate it is incomplete preparation.

Beth went on to further explain that she "can write a great five paragraph essay about anything I want to. It doesn't mean I've done any thinking about it. It means that I know what's expected. I know the game of studenting." What may be a "typical" essay for one student may be a completely different type of essay for another. Accommodation, for the participants, encompassed providing a variety of ways for students to demonstrate efficiency without holding them all to one measuring stick with which they do not wish to be measured.

In summary, interacting with students, providing ownerships, and creating opportunities in the classroom were the critical themes that were identified by the five participants as central to creating professional relationships in the classroom.

DISCUSSION

According to federal regulation, highly qualified teachers must be prepared to create learning environments for all students. In addition to having knowledge and skills, teacher candidates must be provided with the appropriate dispositions to provide context for the knowledge and skills. It is well documented that teachers must understand society and reflect upon the various ways academic and social achievement are affected by issues of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and ability (Grant & Gillette, 2006; Irvine, 2003; Nieto, 2003). In addition to this development of beliefs and understandings, teacher education programs must find ways to specifically provide examples of appropriate diversity dispositions of teacher candidates and provide specific strategies such as interaction, ownership, and accommodation as ways teachers can create cross cultural relationships with students. Having a definition and providing descriptions of culturally relevant teaching as a means of creating significant relationships is a basic building block to further discussions of the pedagogical considerations of content pedagogy.

This study is not without its limitations. Although the structured field experience provided issues and concepts for discussion, it may not provide an authentic situation for developing relationships. Forty hours over a semester may not be sufficient time for teacher candidates to become part of the history of a classroom that would allow them to be more of a participant than an observer. The teacher candidates repeated mentioned feeling caught between the cooperating teacher and the students. In addition, the teacher candidates were guests in the classrooms and suggested that they had little power in any major decision making and without power, there was little opportunity to develop relationships built on ownership or accommodation.

The issues and concepts experienced were, however, a major contributor to the identification of the themes of interaction, ownership, and accommodation. Before the skills and knowledge base for culturally responsive teaching can be addressed, it is this professional disposition of being able to

identify and describe the elements of culturally responsive education that is critical. Without affecting the teacher candidates' professional disposition, the skills and knowledge have no context for an urban classroom.

This structured field experience with time and attention given to the issue of developing a professional disposition to teach suggests a need to consider the development of relationships in teacher preparation programs. These five participants were initially interested in culturally responsive teaching but the author suggests that the investment of time and interest provided by the structured interviews and reflective journals provided a means for modeling the basic tenets of professional relationship building while learning about its application in the classroom. The process of being involved in the research study provided the participants with the experience of interacting, owning and experiencing accommodation.

CONCLUSION

Teacher preparation programs must model professional teaching dispositions via interactions with teacher candidates that are transactional and accommodating. Through these interviews and reflective journals I was able to see the thinking of my teacher candidates as individuals with individual contributions to their future urban classrooms. Central to our discussions of race, poverty, privilege, and power in the classroom must be a consideration of how teacher educators are, at a basic level, empowering their teacher candidates. Although traditional teacher preparation programs may be limited in creating idyllic programs to prepare our '"culturally insular" teacher candidates for our increasingly diverse classrooms, teacher educators can look to strategies such as interviewing and reflective journaling as a means of modeling the development of relationships through a professional disposition for culturally responsive teaching.

TABLE 1 Interview Protocol

Interview 1

Focused Life History (Seidman, 1998)

These questions were the same for each candidate the same for each candidate. Follow up questions asked for more detail for each of these three prompts.

For example.

1. Tell me more about this teaching/learning experience you mentioned2. What else from your life history do you think is relevant to your views of teaching to

diversity?3. What family experiences or personal experiences have you had with people you would

consider culturally different from you?

Interview 2

The Details of Experience These questions varied for each candidate as they were taken from the first two sections (describe and analyze) of the journal prompts and used as a way to combine each person's prior experiences with what they were experiencing in the classroom.

For example.

1. You mentioned in your journal that your cooperating teacher gave students a choice of materials to complete the assignment. How do you see this choice as culturally responsible teaching?

Interview 3

Reflections on the Meaning These questions varied for each candidate as they were taken from the implications section of the journal prompts and provided a way for candidates to consider "sowhat" for what they were experiencing.

For example.

1. What impact might this approach have on student achievement?2. How might you use this strategy in your future teaching?3. What obstacles may keep you from employing this approach?

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By Sarah Edwards, University of Nebraska at Omaha

Sarah Edwards is an associate professor in Teacher Education at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Currently she teaches effective teaching and literacy courses and researches the

relationship between effective teachers and cultural competence. Her research has been published 16 times and has presented at multiple national and international conferences. Correspondence should be addressed to Sarah Edwards, University of Nebraska at Omaha, College of Education, Teacher Education Department, Roskens Hall 308, 6001 Dodge St., Omaha, NE 68182. E-mail: skedwards@unomaha.edu

Source: Action in Teacher Education, 2011 Yearbook, Vol. 33 Issue 5/6, p493, 16pItem: 71524029