Opinion of primary school teachers about the Culturally responsive education practices used in the life Studies Lessons: Implementation of the practices used in the US to Turkey

Abstract

Culturally Responsive Education (CRE) has been found to be an effective method of teaching because it focuses on academic success for all students, cultural competencies, and sociopolitical aspects and has been proven effective among school cultures that are diverse in demographics. The aim of this research is to reveal opinion of primary school teachers about the Culturally responsive education practices used in the life studies courses. Within the scope of this aim, culturally responsive practices used in the USA were implemented in classrooms in Turkey, and at the end of these practices, teachers' opinions on these applications were examined. In this study, phenomenology, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. This qualitative research design tries to explain what exactly the experiences of many people about a certain concept or event mean. The working group of this research consists of 14 primary school teachers. In order to collect the main data of the research, interviews were conducted with the teachers using a semi-structured interview form. These collected data were transferred to the computer and analyzed with the help of the MAXQDA 2020 software. In addition to the main data of the research, sociometry and sociogram techniques were used to collect additional data. According to the data obtained, it was determined that these practices had two main effects. One of these main effects is the effect on students and the other is the effect on teachers.