Developing culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy through engaged, asset-based teacher preparation

ABSTRACT

Student teaching offers a potentially rich yet underutilized space for teacher educators to support elementary teacher candidates (TCs) in developing dispositions and practices consistent with culturally responsive teaching (CRT). In this study, we found that a cohort of TCs who engaged in a hands-on anti-bias family/community engagement module during student teaching experienced significant growth in self-efficacy for CRT compared with earlier cohorts who did not complete the module. Differences in growth were associated with teacher preferences such as the SES and racial make-up of the schools in which TCs wanted to teach, rather than identity characteristics such as the TCs’ race, SES, or college GPA. This work has implications for how programs that are considering hands-on anti-bias work in conjunction with student teaching might implement, differentiate, and enhance such curricula. It also has implications for future research to understand TCs’ preferences.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-bias
• elementary teacher preparation
• culturally responsive teaching
• self-efficacy
• teacher preferences

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.