Negotiating Reform: Implementing Process Standards in Culturally Responsive Professional Development

Abstract

The paper presents the guiding ideas behind our culturally responsive approach to teacher professional development and an overview of how those tenets inform, tacitly and directly, our efforts to realize the promise of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' five Process Standards. A review of the primary obstacles teachers face in implementing these standards in their own teaching and learning is followed by a description of the design elements in a university-based professional development program. Our goal is to provide an example of the foundations upon which an evolving approach to culturally responsive professional development planning has grown. We discuss research on what constitutes effective teacher professional development while noting the paucity of programs that embrace recognized needs. We do not give a prescription for effective teacher development. Instead, we speak as teacher-educators about the necessary philosophical and self-evaluative underpinnings to effective professional development and our approach to creating an environment where it is safe to leave the isolation of forced autonomy and it is valued to be reflective about community, mathematical activity, and intellectual engagement.

“It’s All Possible”: Urban Educators’ Perspectives on Creating a Culturally Relevant, Schoolwide, College-Going Culture for Black and Latino Male Students

“…This approach to PD requires deliberately creating space for school professionals to evaluate attitudes, practices, and personal levels of cultural competence. Activities for facilitating this process through PD include self-evaluation, reflective implementation of pedagogical tools, and reflective debriefing during which the PD facilitator metacognitively analyzes participants' understandings and contributions (Farmer et al, 2005;Gay & Kirkland, 2003).…”

“…While various models of PD for in-service educators exist (see Burbank & Kauchak, 2003; Webster-Wright, 2009), a predominant approach for in-service educators generally centers on understanding professional learning as active, social, and practice centered (Webster-Wright, 2009). Many models of PD, however, are largely lecture based and devoid of active learning from participants (Farmer, Hauk, & Neumann, 2005). Furthermore, traditional PD models have been criticized for their inability to change teacher behaviors, specifically behaviors related to teaching students of color (Kelly, 1999).…”

Culturally Responsive Focus Groups: Reframing the Research Experience to Focus on Participants

“…As researchers, we began to craft the notion of culturally responsive research practices through the exploration of culturally responsive teaching practices that focus on creating classroom environments that best meet the needs of all students and allow for new ways to understand and co-construct knowledge (Farmer, Hauk & Neumann, 2005; Gay, 2000; Villegas & Lucas, 2002a). Through their research in high school contexts, Villegas and Lucas (2002a) describe six aspects of a culturally responsive educator.…”

Culturally responsive relational reflexive ethics in research: the three rs

“…Similarly, a culturally responsive researcher attempts to sensitively accommodate participants, and thus enhances the possibility that trustworthy information can be exchanged successfully. Being a culturally responsive researcher involves the following values based on Farmer et al (2005): (a) "explicit recognition, valuing, and discussion" of cultural differences (p. 61), (b) validating the world-views of participants, (c) explicitly discussing power differentials, and (d) acknowledging non-traditional research methods may work better with participants of differing cultural values. In addition, cultural responsiveness includes an affirming attitude toward cultural differences (Villegas and Lucas 2002a,b), and an understanding that individuals conceptions of culture are "deeply embedded into the fabric of the social, economic, political, and structural institutions of the society of which these individuals were socialized" (Banks 1996, p. 66).…”