Change in preservice teacher beliefs about inclusion, responsibility, and culturally responsive pedagogy for English learners

ABSTRACT

This study examines the effectiveness of a specially designed intervention in changing preservice teacher beliefs about the education of linguistically diverse students. The experiment involved a semester-long online letter exchange with English learner (EL) pen pal partners from two public schools. The research questions included: What effect did participation in an E-Pal exchange program have on content-area preservice K–12 teachers’ beliefs about (a) benefits of the inclusion of ELs in mainstream classrooms; who should be responsible for ELs’ (b) academic achievement and (c) language development; and (d) benefits of culturally responsive pedagogy for ELs’ education? Participants included 74 preservice teachers in experimental (n = 35) and control (n = 39) groups. Survey data were submitted to several repeated-measure factorial ANOVA tests. Results suggested that the experiment had a transformative effect on all four measures pertaining to teachers’ beliefs about ELs’ education. In addition, item-based post hoc analyses revealed some specific items that contributed to differences between participants’ pre-and posttest gain scores more saliently.

KEYWORDS:

• English learners (ELs)
• online fieldwork
• preservice teacher beliefs

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Canevin Center for Social Justice at Duquesne University.