Research on how teachers become culturally responsive tends to focus on preservice teachers or on the professional development activities that are associated with change for inservice teachers. Little is known about how the various elements of culturally responsive teaching—including knowledge, skills, and fundamental orientations—interact with one another as teachers change. This case study followed 19 educators across four schools and over 2 years as they conducted action research to enhance their cultural responsiveness. We found four zones of development that characterized the teachers’ change: consciousness-raising, consciousness- and relationship-building, knowledge- and practice-building, and practice-refining. Within each zone, two or three elements of culturally responsive teaching appeared to change most dramatically and to mutually reinforce one another as teachers developed. Professional development experiences should attend to these different zones and to the gradual nature of this process.
This article details the community-engaged research process employed by a researcher–practitioner partnership (RPP) to develop and pilot a common exit survey of teachers from participating school districts at the end of the 2018–2019 school year. This development occurred with input from school district representatives serving on a study team as well as through ongoing conversations with district human resource directors. There were three goals for this process: (1) to develop a common exit survey relevant to local needs with a strong conceptual framework, (2) to increase response rates and establish consistent administration practices in the region, and (3) to inform future data collection and analysis related to the broader RPP study on teacher retention. The resultant instrument articulated nine common categories of reasons for leaving based on analysis and adaptation of regional exit surveys: retirement, personal reasons, teacher preparation, compensation and benefits, career advancement/switch or higher education, community context, district context, school context, and testing and accountability context. Exit survey items are provided with reliability and validity information, and theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
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