Section archive - Multiculturalism & Diversity

Despite reports of already practicing K-12 teachers’ attempts to teach for critical social justice in their classrooms, there is little connection between teacher education programs and/or the impact of teacher practice in the classroom. This article presents data collected over 3 years from one teacher enrolled in an urban-multicultural teacher education program who transitioned into her first years of teaching. Findings revealed that the teacher implemented culturally relevant education through (a) a caring community, (b) holding high expectations, (c) cultural competence, and (d) sociopolitical awareness as a teacher. Barriers the teacher faced as well as lessons for teacher educators are shared.

This study was an attempt to probe the perceptions of the English as a foreign language (EFL) students about the cultural identity development of the EFL teachers who participated in cultural negotiation programs. To that end, the interactionally oriented narratives of four EFL students were collected. The narratives were about the cultural performance of the EFL teachers who participated in the cultural negotiation programs in the EFL classes. The narratives were codified based on the principles of Strauss and Corbin (1998) systematic approach. The findings indicated that the EFL students had positive opinions about how their teachers dealt with cultural issues in the classrooms after participating in cultural negotiation programs. The findings also indicated that the EFL students perceived that the EFL teachers engaged more in cultural discussions, they used more interaction types, they were more motivated to address cultural issues in the classes, and they took into account the emotions of their students in cultural discussions in the classrooms. Moreover, it can be concluded from the findings that cultural negotiation programs have positive effects on the EFL teachers’ cultural identity development if the principles of identity-as-practice and identity-in-discourse will be followed in the EFL teacher education programs.

This qualitative case study investigates how two preservice elementary teachers crafted narratives of Black women in the Civil Rights Movement using an intersectional lens. Using Black feminism and Black critical patriotism as theoretical frameworks, the authors examine the process in which preservice teachers attempted to construct historical narratives using Crenshaw’s framework of intersectionality. The preservice teachers used this framework to examine the intersecting identities and resulting experiences of women in the past and present in order to present a more complex narrative of the Civil Rights Movement to elementary students. This study is important because it helps preservice teachers and their students become conscious of the ways in which different people experience(d) the world based on intersecting identities as a way to promote empathy and critical citizenship.

This article uses a phenomenological approach to explore the organizational dynamic of boundary heightening for 27 Black male teachers, across 14 schools, in one urban school district. The authors report that Black male teachers described being perceived by their colleagues as either incompetent or overqualified to teach their subject matter. These experiences created workplace environments in which participants felt alienated from their colleagues. In response, these Black male teachers strategically erected social boundaries to manage interactions with their colleagues.