Developing and piloting a tool to assess culturally responsive principles in schools serving Indigenous students

ABSTRACT

This article presents a tool and discusses the rationale for the authors’ development of a tool designed to assess the alignment of culturally responsive schooling principles within schools serving predominantly U.S. Indigenous students. Schools that serve a majority of Indigenous students are generally located on or bordering Native Nations that are federally recognized as being sovereign Nations with a government-to-government relationship to the federal government, so the more generic diversity, equity, and inclusion tools that currently exist are insufficient for the unique contexts of schools in Indian Country. Thus, we offer a tool that can be used to identify and strengthen the integration of culturally responsive principles specifically for, with, and in Indigenous-serving schools.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ Diné is the term used by many Navajo people to describe themselves, and it translates to “the people” in the Navajo language. In this essay, we use Diné and Navajo interchangeably, and we privilege Diné in most cases because it is the term preferred by most of the teacher leaders with whom we’ve worked.

² We honor and acknowledge that the term Indigenous is global in scope. We also want to be clear that our work in this paper is situated in the U.S., and more specifically in the Southwestern U.S.

³ Although a full exploration of the DINÉ is not within the confines of this paper, we direct readers to other publications such as Castagno (2020, 2021).

⁴ As a research project funded by the National Science Foundation, the research questions focused on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. However, the DINÉ is not limited to STEM content and our team has, and will continue to, leverage the tool with non-STEM curriculum units and classroom observations.

⁵ The complicated nature of the relationship between schools and Native Nations is related, in part, to initial treaty agreements that included the provision of education by the federal government, the long-standing efforts of schools to assimilate Indigenous youth, the inconsistent ownership and funding of schools, and distributed efforts to leverage schools to advance Native Nation’s goals related to language and culture.

⁶ It is beyond the scope of this paper to fully describe the various ways we support teachers to integrate culturally responsive principles, but this includes lectures and discussions on these principles, learning experiences with traditional knowledge holders/elders, and exposure to the standards developed by the Department of Diné Education. Importantly, these standards provide one example of the exercise of tribal sovereignty and, therefore, of Native Nation building in context.

⁷ The COVID-19 pandemic may prevent us from conducting classroom observations with the 2020 cohort of teachers, but that is yet to be determined.

⁸ Completed curriculum units are published on the DINÉ website and can be accessed at https://in.nau.edu/dine/dine-fellows-curriculum-units/.

⁹ The Institute for Native-serving Educators is a broader initiative to grow the capacity of educators in Indian Country through professional development partnerships. This builds on the work of the DINÉ and expands the efforts to other Native Nations.

¹⁰ The authors are grateful to an anonymous reviewer for these recommendations to continue to strengthen our work.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [1908464].

Notes on contributors

Angelina E. Castagno

Angelina E. Castagno, PhD, is the Director of the Institute for Native-serving Educators, and a Professor of Educational Leadership and Foundations at Northern Arizona University. Her teaching, research, and consulting focus on equity and diversity in U.S. schools, with a focus on Indigenous education. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of American Indian Education and has authored or edited four books and numerous articles in peer reviewed national and international journals.

Darold H. Joseph

Darold H. Joseph, PhD, is a member of the Hopi Nation, and an Assistant Professor of Educational Specialties & Teaching and Learning at Northern Arizona University. His teaching, research and community work focus on the intersection of disability with sociocultural differences that inform educational inequities for American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth. His work aims to advance opportunities for individuals with disabilities to persist in education, health and wellness, and cultural well-being through the lens of resilience.

Hosava Kretzmann

Hosava Kretzmann is the current graduate research assistant for the Diné Institute for Navajo Nation Educators (DINÉ). His family roots extend from a small Hopi village called Hotevillla. He recently completed his Master's Degree in Public Health with a focus in Indigenous Health at Northern Arizona University. He will continue his work within health research, cultural competency, and serving the surrounding Indigenous communities.

Pradeep M. Dass

Pradeep M. Dass, PhD, is the chair of the Department of STEM Education at Northern Arizona University. He is a former high school biology teacher and his current research and teaching background is in science education, specifically science teacher education (both pre-service and in-service). He has published widely on topics in science education and science teacher education and served on the editorial review teams of multiple national and international journals. More recently he has shifted his professional focus on STEM as a mindset and pedagogy for collaboratively addressing global issues of the 21st century and as a vehicle for culturally relevant pedagogy.