Date of Award

6-1-2011

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

Morgridge College of Education

First Advisor

Kent Seidel, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Susan Korach

Third Advisor

Dana Selzer

Keywords

Classroom, Culture, Equity, Ethnic, Racial, Toolkit

Abstract

Public education has experienced an unprecedented growth of diversity within the student population and accompanying that growth are inequities that are present in our schools and communities. Many school teachers and administrators have a limited awareness of how their own class, gender, and race impact their work, and often, do not see how their views about others' class, gender, and race help to reproduce the social hierarchy. These limited or uneducated views may also contribute to the achievement gap that exists between students belonging to the minority and non-minority groups.

It is important to study these views and ask whether educators are able to increase awareness of their own class, gender, and race and reflect on how their views and beliefs impact their teaching. This study employed a multi-site design to compare four public middle schools in Colorado on perceptions of cultural competency as well as investigating possible correlations between these perceptions and the disaggregated discipline data for each of the schools.

While it was not possible to confirm a relationship was between the average school site score on the Cultural Proficiency Continuum and discipline referrals of Hispanic students the qualitative data illuminated the perspectives of the participating teachers regarding cultural proficiency and the classroom. The qualitative data revealed significant negative perspectives held by the participants regarding the largest student group in the middle schools in the study. The focus group data illuminated the perspectives of the teachers in this study as well as their perception of the effect race and culture have on the middle school classroom.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Rachel E. Heide

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

130 p.

Discipline

Education, Ethnic studies, Cultural anthropology



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