Topic: Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

Order Description need an introduction and a summary for Chapter 5 of my dissertation. It also has some revisions that are necessary to create flow and organization of content. It is imperative to read the Chapter 1 and 2 in order to revise the sections in chapter 5. Please review All Markup in Review of Chapter 5 to read comment and revisions needed. Chapter 5 – Findings, Conclusions, and Recommendations Through my research, I intended to identify middle school teachers’ formal understandings of the implementation of culturally relevant pedagogy in the classroom and tie their formal understandings with real-world practices through descriptions of CRP implementations. Three middle school teachers, Donna, Janet, and Carmen, from Jacksonville School District 123 in Chicago, Illinois, were interviewed concerning their CRP conceptions and practices. The teachers’ interviews were examined using the qualitative analysis program NVivo, which analyzed the frequency of CRP topics across the six interviews of the three teachers . The results of the analysis yielded three principle incipal CRP themes: (a) some methods and techniques utilized to implement CRP were common to all three teachers; (b) teachers were aware that care and concern must be practiced toward their students’ cultural identities and heritage; and (c) the teachers practiced critical reflections toward their culture, social backgrounds, and cultural experiences in implementing CRP. CPR in Practice-Principle 1: ???? My study identified some common methods practiced by all three teachers in their CRP implementation, despite the diversity in the teachers’ social and cultural backgrounds. First, all teachers interviewed adhered to Common Core standards. The teachers shared the observation that the Common Core standards offered a large amount of flexibility to the teachers, especially in constructing their implementation of CRP. Donna was particularly pleased that Common Core standards allowed her to choose her own materials in class, which fit her teaching context given that she worked mostly with gifted children. Janet reported a similar approach in terms of choosing materials, especially from online sources. Carmen’s appreciation for the flexibility of the Common Core standards has centered on encouraging students to form their own opinions . All the participants used current events for their CRP implementations . The teachers stated that the most important benefit of using current events is relevance. Students are more engaged in topics that they feel are relevant to their own experiences. The teachers observed that the constant exposure of students to current events across a variety of media has contributed to students seeing current events as relevant to their own lives. Janet noted how current news also has provided an excellent means of activating prior knowledge. Carmen identified how current events, especially those occurring outside the United States, have coincided with CRP through exposure and engagement with other cultures. Donna appreciated the opportunity for debate and communication among the students, which teaching current events has encouraged . The three teachers mentioned taking advantage of information and communications technology, notably computers, tablets, and online access. They expressed concern about ensuring that their students had access to computers and the Internet as part of their CRP practice. Janet and Carmen have integrated the use of computers for their teaching, especially since they assign readings from online educational services such as Achieve 3000 and Newsela. The online programs offer current events articles written in a spectrum of reading levels. The complexity of the article is adjusted based on an individual student’s Lexile level, an assessment system that determines the student’s reading abilities. For objective news articles, Donna and Carmen cited CNN as the most commonly used source for their students CRP practice. CPR in Practice-Principle 2: ???? The second principleprincipal theme demonstrated by the results of my study is the concern and care the teachers expressed toward their students’ cultural identities and heritage. The first aspect of this principal theme was how the teachers discussed culture in their classes. To effectively use current events as the centerpiece of CRP, discussing culture with students must establish relevance and student interest. For Donna, raising students’ interest in culture has involved learning about the likes and dislikes of the students, as informed by individual students’ social and cultural backgrounds. Janet reported a similar approach, with the added goal of making her gifted students realize their potential. Carmen stated that teachers can raise student interest in cultural openness and understanding by encouraging creativity and offering curricula and materials that are outside students’ comfort zones. Even then, she believes that unique or out-of-the-ordinary learning materials must still be relevant to students’ experiences. All interviewed teachers described maintaining civility and openness as something for which they strive. According to their interviews, all the teachers emphasized to their students that interactions and engagements in the classroom must be informed by respect for each other. This is, perhaps, the topic closest to the goals of CRP, as the teachers have to reconcile the cultural differences of their students. Donna and Carmen have accomplished this through group activities, with an emphasis on communication and community building within the classroom. Janet’s approach has been to center on respect and to include students’ parents in the whole learning process. The classroom environment was another aspect of the principal theme of caring for students’ cultural identities and heritages. Carmen and Donna were particularly concerned with creating an environment where students could freely celebrate and express their cultural identities. The two teachers used artworks for this purpose. Not only were the students able to creatively engage with their cultural backgrounds, but they were also exposed constantly to the cultural identities of others inside the classroom. The use of artwork fit the CRP emphasis on cultural engagement within the classroom. CPR.... The research introduced a third principal theme: teachers engaging in critical reflections about their own social and cultural backgrounds. The first aspect of this principal theme is teachers recognizing that they have to rely on their unique social and cultural backgrounds in order to relate to their students. Janet relied on her social sciences background in implementing CRP. Donna’s focus on gifted children directly affected what practices and methods she used in the classroom. Carmen utilized her Jewish heritage to share in the experience of being a cultural minority with her African-American students. The teachers used their backgrounds as a unique tool for their conceptions of CRP. The second aspect of the third principal theme is the recognition that CRP concepts and practices have successfully been integrated into the curriculum of higher education. All three teachers referred to their studies at universities as the origin of their exposure to formal CRP concepts. Carmen, Donna, and Janet a formal educational experience from their university programs. The teachers would all incorporate some of the prescribed CRP concepts they have learned into the real-world practice and implementation. Finally, the teachers’ reflections during the follow-up interview manifested their personal experiences with CRP and seemed to promise future CRP implementations that are more mindful of cultural and social contexts. Donna appreciated how participating in the study brought at the forefront her CRP practices in a formal and critical manner; before the interviews, she felt that she was really just doing things automatically, according to specific situations. Janet realized in the follow-up interview that establishing global awareness is important for her students. Carmen’s reflection is similar to Donna’s. Carmen felt as if she had been doing what was best for the education of her students; but, after examining Carmen’s instructional practices more closely, she was able to see the specific mechanics of how she encouraged cultural openness and social engagement from her students. Interpretation of Findings Implications? The results of my research have several important implications for CRP implementations and education in general. The most frequent and ubiquitous topic described by the teachers in the interviews, which is the use of current events and news items, seems to imply that CRP in real-world practice centers on making students realize how their individual, diverse, and culturally and socially informed experiences relate to the rest of the world. All the teachers, in using news articles as the topic of their lessons or a jumping off point for other discussions, wanted to establish the relevance of the taught material to students’ lives. Establishing such relevance increases students’ interest in learning, which makes the whole learning process more effective from the perspectives of the teachers interviewed. Students who understand how cultural issues affect them directly are more aware if cultural issues. The immediacy and proliferation of current events in the various media also help position news around the world at the forefront of the students’ lived experiences. In this manner, the interest brought about by the recognized relevance of current events broadens the students’ cultural horizons, which is the purpose of CRP implementations in the first place. It is interesting that all the teachers recognized this phenomenon. CRP theoretical foundations focus on eliminating racial tensions within the classroom, with the intention of likewise eliminating racism’s detrimental effects of hostility and alienation (Nieto, 2012; Mark & Moss 2011). However, the results of the research, in which the teachers used current events as the most common practice in their CRP implementation, suggest that broadening the cultural horizons and promoting openness among students must be done by connecting students to the world outside the classroom. Even in Carmen’s interview, in which she specifically mentioned using her Jewish background to connect with her predominantly African-American students via shared experience of being minorities in the United States, she recognized that she had to explore cultural issues that occur outside of the classroom in order to create openness inside the classroom. Similarly, Donna’s discussion of the Trayvon Martin shooting in 2012 was motivated by the students’ experiences outside of the classroom; the class had all heard about the tragedy, and the fact that the victim was close to their own age had prompted them to request that the current event be examined within the classroom. These specific instances are strong indications that cultural contexts that inform students’ lives outside of the educational institution have an enormous influence on the race and racial relations issues at the center of CRP. Through the extensive teaching experiences of the educators interviewed in the research, the teachers found that, in real-world practice, cultural concerns external to the classroom experience must be brought to the learning process. The teachers discovered, as demonstrated by the results of this research, that teaching current events most effectively introduced external cultural concerns to the learning process. Teaching current events links students to the outside world and establishes the relevance of external factors, which then equips them with the capability to address race issues with their fellow students with an open attitude. The teachers’ reliance on computer and Internet access is another interesting result from the research. Because of the primacy of current events in CRP implementation among all the teachers, the most up-to-date and flexible sources of these current events are found on the Internet. Again, the implication is that students need to be connected to the world outside the classroom before they can begin examining racial issues within the classroom, and this is enabled by computer access. While the theoretical foundations of CRP discussed at the beginning of this research emphasized the diversity of cultural influences of students within the classroom (Solorzano & Yosso, 2000), CRP theory does not fully account for encouraging students to explore diversity outside the classroom. Moreover, there is no theoretical underpinning from CRP with regard to utilizing digital and communications technology to facilitate CRP implementations. Yet, in the real-world practice described by the teachers interviewed in this research, technology plays such a crucial part in the CRP practice of the teachers that it ranked second in number of sources and frequency. Carmen and Donna have even used online educational services and integrated them into their curricula. The encouragement of open discussion and maintenance of respect among the students is another important topic shared by all participants. The teachers’ have integrated their own unique social and cultural backgrounds in order to relate and even learn from their students. Notably, however, “traditional” CRP practices rank below using current events and utilizing computers and the Internet to facilitate cultural openness and understanding. The implication seems to be that current CRP theory favors the intuitive approach of starting cultural openness and targeted discussions of race and racial relations in the classroom in order to prepare students for engaging culturally with the rest of the world. However, as the results of this research showed, real-world CRP practice suggests a counterintuitive approach: the students’ cultural engagement with the outside world is more immediate to their lived experience and produces the kind of cultural and racial interaction that they have with their fellow students. When the teachers incorporate current events, they build on the connections of the students with present, local, and international cultural factors external to the classroom and then relate the current events to classroom cultural interactions. All the teachers must engage with critical race theory indirectly through current events before they can initiate open discussion and debate directly. Limitations of the Study While my research yielded interesting results concerning real world CRP practices, there are some limitations that must be addressed. The primary limitation involves the scope of the study. While the choice of interviewing three middle school teachers from the Jacksonville School District 123 in Chicago, Illinois, is directly influenced by the teachers’ students being predominantly of cultural minority backgrounds, it must be understood that the CRP practices that were described are limited to a small area. I cannot claim my research to be representative of CRP practices on a national or even state level. The results have important implications because of the focus on schools where most students have cultural minority backgrounds, but such implications do not necessarily extend outside the district. It bears noting that because the schools of the teachers interviewed in this study subscribe to Common Core standards, there are aspects of the results and their implications that can be useful in a state or national assessment of CRP practices. This is especially true with the teachers’ appreciation of the flexibility afforded by the Common Core standards for educators to construct their own curriculum and assessments as well as to choose the most relevant materials for the specific and unique needs of their students. The other topics, notably the topics with the highest number of sources and frequency, may be limited to Jacksonville School District 123. The number of participants may also be considered a limitation, although, as a qualitative study, the implications of Donna, Janet, and Carmen’s accounts are still fruitful. They come from diverse social and cultural backgrounds, and the diversity of their CRP practices provides ample proof of their knowledge. Still, having more participants even within Jacksonville School District 123 could provide a more comprehensive understanding of CRP implementations. Understandably, expanding the number of teachers interviewed is challenging, especially if the interviews are to remain in-depth and sensitive to the contexts of each teacher’s educational institution, social and cultural background, and the unique needs and experiences of students. Suggestions for Future Research The results of my study have opened the doors to many research avenues that may be pursued by future educational researchers interested in CRP. First, the scope of the study may be expanded. As mentioned in the limitations, the study was limited to three participants within a single school district. Perhaps a broader study covering a larger group of schools within Illinois may be conducted, extending the implications of such a study to the state level. Second, similar studies may be conducted in other states within the United States. Given that cultural and social contexts vary from state to state, a study of CRP implementations from states outside Illinois would be interesting. My research has introduced an approach that can be appropriated to other districts and states, and, if these studies can be conducted nationwide, a national assessment of the most prominent CRP concepts and practices from present-day, real-world classrooms can be accomplished. The results of my study concerning the technological dimension of CRP is also a potentially fruitful area of research. Janet and Carmen’s use of Achieve 3000 and Newsela invites exploration. How prevalent is the use of online educational services in schools throughout America today, especially in the context of CRP? Are online educational services effective for CRP implementation? After all, the accounts of Donna and Carmen are based on their perceptions as teachers; it is yet unknown whether students benefit from the CRP framework using online services. Regarding the achievement gap, access to technology and its relationship to education is an issue prevalent across many fields. The overwhelming concern from the interviews about access to computer labs introduces the issue of a gap in access to CRP implementations because of limitations to computer and Internet access. Ok, perhaps here, a final, personal thought—what does it mean for you. To end with computers seems kind of a let down. Let’s hear your voice as you share some final thoughts. Return to the introduction from Chapter 1 and restate and what you said you care about, want to learn, believe, know, experience...and close the circle.