چکیده (انگلیسی):

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of one school’s teacher-driven
professional development effort to address culturally responsive teaching practices in a large
district in a Midwestern state. During the 2011-2012 school year, a team of teachers and
principals began a three-year long effort to provide job-embedded professional development
intended to focus on delivering high-impact strategies to transform the educational practices of
teachers through improving cultural competence. A survey was given to 120 fulltime certified
teachers, and findings suggest that while teachers agreed most that the professional development
helped examine views on poverty, they agreed least that the professional development helped
close the achievement gap. Additionally, elective and special education teachers were
significantly more positive than core subject classroom teachers in terms of how the research
they read improved instruction and how the professional development provided impacted
building-wide faculty instruction. Analysis of open-ended items highlight several themes, namely
the professional development helped teachers by acknowledging cultural differences of the
students they taught, but that ultimately the challenges of lack of time and implementation apathy
impeded the success of the professional development effort. These findings provide important
insight for leadership preparation, particularly about supporting teacher-driven efforts,
facilitating culturally responsive practices, and the reflecting on the pressures teachers face due
to high stakes accountability and reform efforts