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The Urban Review

, Volume 48, Issue 4, pp 579–600 | Cite as

Grappling with Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: A Study of Elementary-Level Teacher Candidates’ Learning across Practicum and Diversity Coursework Experiences

  • Shannon M. Daniel
Article
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Abstract

This investigation of teacher candidates’ (TCs) learning in their pre-service elementary education program demonstrates how TCs grappled with enacting culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) in their practicum sites. Interviews with TCs, analyzed with Lucas and Villegas’s (2002) tenets of CRP, reveal how TCs thought about equitable instruction in elementary schools. TCs and the teacher educator of the diversity course report on how such coursework supports TCs as they strive to educate multilingual, multicultural elementary school students. This examination, which focuses on TCs’ learning rather than teacher education program design, provides implications for how teacher educators can support TCs in ways that are responsive to their personalized questions, experiences, strengths, and overall development as teacher learners. Implications for foundational diversity-oriented coursework that connects more directly with TCs’ practicum experiences are discussed.

Keywords

Culturally responsive pedagogy Diversity coursework Multicultural foundations Practicum Field experiences Elementary Teacher education Pre-service teacher candidates 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Peabody CollegeVanderbilt UniversityNashvilleUSA

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