Abstract
As the P-12 student landscape continues to grow in cultural and linguistic diversity, teacher preparation programs have yet to adequately prepare teacher candidates’ teaching and learning skills in meeting the academic and socio-emotional needs of diverse student demographics. This article examines teacher candidates’ cultural competence and cultural responsiveness to enhance candidates’ educator preparation and stimulate candidates’ personal growth development as developing culturally and linguistically responsive new teachers. While many teacher preparation programs require one multicultural or diversity education course, the authors examine a Minority Serving Institution’s integration of a cultural immersion experience for teacher candidates as one way of supporting their development as culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogues. This paper aims at supporting school districts’ need of culturally competent new teachers who have the content knowledge and pedagogy to teach and support culturally and linguistically diverse children. Recognizing this need, this qualitative analysis highlights the importance of and a need for cultural and linguistic competence among teacher candidates. Findings from this study provides a means by which universities can implement cross-cultural coursework and field-based experiences to prepare culturally responsive teacher candidates.
Highlights
It is widely documented that our educator preparation programs have a daunting task of effectively preparing a teaching force for classrooms that are increasingly more racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse (Allen et al, 2017)
Though a dearth of literature examines teacher candidates’ cultural competence, there exists a deficit in examining and understanding minority teacher candidates’ cultural and intercultural competence as developing culturally and linguistically responsive new teachers. Acknowledging this void, this study examined ten undergraduate teacher candidates’ perspectives and experiences from an urban minority serving institution (MSI) who participated in a week-long rural education exchange program at a predominately white institution (PWI) to support the candidates’ development as culturally responsive new teachers
This study examines how teacher candidates from a Minority Serving Institution employ cultural and intercultural competence learned in their coursework through their cross-cultural experience at a rural Predominately White Institution in the southeast
Summary
It is widely documented that our educator preparation programs have a daunting task of effectively preparing a teaching force for classrooms that are increasingly more racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse (Allen et al, 2017). The ever-increasing population of culturally and linguistically diverse learners has become an emergent frustration of teaching and learning that has encroached both students, teachers, and teacher candidates. Many teacher preparation programs fail to adequately prepare teacher candidates to effectively teach culturally and linguistically diverse students, integrate culturally and linguistically diverse teaching praxis, communicate with culturally diverse families, and thrive in culturally and linguistically diverse communities. While educator preparation programs have integrated a diversity or multicultural education course within their programs of study, these teacher candidates continue to “lack the depth of understanding needed to design, develop, and implement high impact cultural diversity education” Educator preparation programs must become culturally and linguistically responsive to teacher candidates’ preparation as new teachers (Kea & Trent, 2013; Trent et al, 2008).
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