Abstract
BackgroundCulturally responsive teaching (CRT) has been associated with increased student engagement and achievement. Its practice in classrooms, however, has been shown to be less than optimal. Nonetheless, certain teacher qualities have been suggested to facilitate its practice.AimsThe current study sought quantitative evidence in support of two of these teacher qualities, namely teachers’ multicultural attitudes, and their perspective taking abilities. By identifying the strength of the suggested relationships, we aimed to examine the generalizability of previous findings in the literature and inform teachers’ professional development and interventions.SampleA total of 143 primary school teachers from different parts of the Netherlands responded to our online survey.MethodsWe conducted a multivariate multiple regression analysis to investigate the relationship between these qualities and teachers’ engagement in two separate but related components of CRT (i.e., socially sensitive and culturally sensitive teaching).ResultsResults of our analysis yielded significant relationships between the two teacher qualities and the frequency with which teachers engage in socially and culturally sensitive teaching. Perspective taking was a stronger predictor for both aspects of CRT.ConclusionThese findings signal the significance of incorporating especially perspective taking experiences and exercises into teacher education and professional development programmes, which could benefit all students regardless of their backgrounds. Our results are promising as these qualities are malleable and thus can be improved.
Highlights
Responsive teaching (CRT) has been associated with increased student engagement and achievement
Teachers who reported more positive Multicultural Attitudes, higher Perspective Taking Abilities, and more frequent Culturally Responsive Teaching worked in schools that had higher Concentration of Minoritized Students
In order to test our hypotheses that teachers’ Perspective Taking Abilities and Multicultural Attitudes are uniquely associated with Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices, we conducted a multivariate multiple regression analysis with Perspective Taking and Multicultural Attitudes as predictor variables, and their Culturally Sensitive Teaching and Socially Sensitive Teaching as the dependent variables, while we controlled for their classroom’s Ethnically Minoritized Student Concentration
Summary
Responsive teaching (CRT) has been associated with increased student engagement and achievement. Certain teacher qualities have been suggested to facilitate its practice. By identifying the strength of the suggested relationships, we aimed to examine the generalizability of previous findings in the literature and inform teachers’ professional development and interventions. We conducted a multivariate multiple regression analysis to investigate the relationship between these qualities and teachers’ engagement in two separate but related components of CRT (i.e., socially sensitive and culturally sensitive teaching). Results of our analysis yielded significant relationships between the two teacher qualities and the frequency with which teachers engage in socially and culturally sensitive teaching. These findings signal the significance of incorporating especially perspective taking experiences and exercises into teacher education and professional development programmes, which could benefit all students regardless of their backgrounds. Our results are promising as these qualities are malleable and can be improved
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