Examining Preservice Teachers' Culturally Responsive Teaching Self-Efficacy Doubts

Abstract

This study was designed to add to the research on teachers' self-efficacy beliefs by examining preservice teachers' culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy doubts. We examined the tasks that preservice teachers felt least efficacious to successfully execute and explored the reasoning behind these self-efficacy doubts. Consequently, we were able to go beyond the quantitative results to generate a comprehensive understanding of these self-efficacy doubts. Preservice teachers recognized the value and utility of culturally responsive classroom practices, yet doubted their ability to successfully implement them (i.e., agent–means perspective). These self-efficacy doubts stemmed from a general lack of knowledge regarding student diversity and culturally responsive pedagogy and experiences observing and working in diverse educational settings. We believe that our study confirms that relying on item-specific scores on teacher self-efficacy measures does not provide the guidance needed for designing interventions that are responsive to preservice teachers' self-efficacy doubts and the reasons behind these doubts. However, by combining these scores with participants' rationales, self-efficacy data can become immensely valuable to teacher educators. The implications for culturally responsive teacher education are discussed.