Developing STEM Teachers’ Cultural Competence through an Urban Teaching Curriculum: A Cultural Border Crossing Experience

Abstract

ABSTRACT Many studies have argued the need for culturally competent teachers in the classroom as learners’ demography shifts toward more diversity. The teaching workforce remains predominantly unchanged, with more White teachers than other races or ethnic groups. Many teacher preparation programs use multicultural education or equity and diversity courses that focus on current issues and perspective; however, few use curriculums that focus on urban teaching or integrate an immersive experience to enhance their preservice teachers’ cultural competency. This paper highlights an urban teaching curriculum that uses a holistic praxis of formal—theory-based and informal—practice-based immersive learning experience to prepare preservice teachers for diversified urban classrooms. The study examined the impact of the curriculum on preservice teachers’ development of cultural knowledge base leading to cultural competency. This well-crafted praxis offer rich and authentic learning experiences resulting in the positive transformation of the preservice teacher’s beliefs, dispositions, and self-efficacy to be culturally aware and responsive. The findings indicate that cultural isolation and deficit perspectives contributed to the participants’ lack of cultural knowledge. However, the immersive experience presented through the curriculum provided the preservice teachers’ access to authentic informal learning that transformed their worldviews and enhanced their self-efficacy to teach in urban high-need settings.