Abstract:
This multi-case research study explored the literacy perspectives and self-reported practices of a group of teachers who graduated from a Teacher Education Program (TEP) with a culturally responsive (CR) framework. The study also compared and discussed changes over time in an educational system immersed in discourses of efficiency, accountability, and standardization that contradicted the foundations of their TEP.The teachers selected for the study graduated from a program that aimed to develop teacher candidates’ knowledge, skills and dispositions to work confidently, competently and comfortably with culturally and linguistically diverse children and their families. Research in teacher education has shown the importance of integrating diversity courses within teachers’ core instruction. The emphasis on this topic in the coursework depends on the TEP’s theoretical framework. This study explored the influence of a specific TEP with a strong philosophical stance on the literacy education of culturally and linguistically diverse students (CLDS) in order to break the cycle of reproduction in education. This study found that teachers struggled to maintain their critical agency and philosophical stance when making instructional decisions. Teachers did not adhere to one discourse, but moved continuously within a continuum of two discourses: culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) and the educational establishment discourse. This study used critical literacy as its epistemological framework and sociocultural, CR, and multicultural education theories to describe and explain the practices of these teachers: how these teachers solved and circumvented the conflicts between theory and practice in an educational system that, in some cases, contradicted their perspectives about education.
