Teachers’ perspectives of their development of culturally sustaining pedagogical practices: lessons for teacher learning

ABSTRACT

This study explores factors that influence teachers’ development of culturally sustaining pedagogical practices. The research is guided by the question: How do teachers perceive their development of culturally sustaining pedagogical practices? Data collection occurred during the fall 2020 semester and involved five high school teachers. Given COVID-19 and the pervasiveness of online learning, interviews and observations occurred via Zoom. The data includes semi-structured interviews, fieldnotes, teaching artefacts, and questionnaires. This study found that all teachers employed dynamic support systems that significantly factored into their development as culturally sustaining educators. Due to the central role of communities of practice in participants’ development, a communities of practice model for culturally sustaining teacher development was created and illustrated in this paper. Social interaction played a significant role in developing educators’ critical stance towards teaching – demonstrating possibilities to productively relate culturally sustaining pedagogy and communities of practice for a critical communities of practice lens to teacher learning. This study suggests that a collective orientation should be central to the work of preservice and in-service teachers within teacher education programmes and PK-12 schools.

KEYWORDS:

• culturally sustaining pedagogy
• teacher learning
• communities of practice
• teacher education
• perspectives of teachers

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the participating teachers for their involvement and immense contributions to this project. I am also grateful for the invaluable feedback and support of Dr. Sam Severance, Dr. Lucinda Pease-Alvarez, and Dr. Brad Olsen throughout this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christina Hewko

Christina Hewko is a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research explores teacher learning and development through prison industrial complex abolition and community-engaged approaches. Her future work will establish insights and models for how to better support anti-racist and justice-oriented teacher learning in diverse educational contexts. Her overarching goal is to make long-term systemic change in the field of teacher learning and education as a professor and researcher.