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This chapter considers the work of preparing educators to teach in culturally sustaining/revitalizing ways. It is based on a qualitative study that examined 60 preservice interns’ cross-cultural experiences in schools in Alaska Native villages. The chapter explores the interns’ descriptions of the schooling contexts related to school-based instruction of Indigenous languages and cultures and considers pedagogical implications for preservice programs that aim to prepare culturally sustaining/revitalizing educators. Findings include accounts of instructional practices in classrooms teaching Indigenous languages and cultures and themes presenting the schooling contexts as crisis, struggle, and hope. Implications for teacher education are discussed consisting of pedagogical responses to the contexts interns described and considerations for supporting preservice teachers’ transformative learning.

This paper describes how an Ontario school board's majority First Nation, Metís and Inuit (FNMI) student population influenced the direction and priorities of the board toward culturally responsive and well-being focused initiatives. Using culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy (CSRP) as a conceptual framework, it explores the board's efforts to meet the socioemotional and identity needs of its FNMI students (and families) through investments in professional learning communities (PLCs) and targeted programming and technologies.

This paper presents findings from one case in a larger multi-year (2015–2017), multiple-case (10 school boards) study by a university research team that included the author. Thematic analysis was used to code interviews and focus groups conducted with over 40 administrators, educators and community partners in the board featured in this paper.

The board's culturally responsive and well-being focused initiatives, while intended to support FNMI students' socioemotional success and sense of inclusiveness in schools, was inadequate at fostering and sustaining students' (and families') cultural survival and communal well-being.

Findings offer practical ways that schools serving large populations of FNMI students might support students' identity development and self-regulation skills in schools while also serving as a cautionary example of strategies that do not sufficiently address student challenges that are the result of ongoing legacies of colonization.

This study provides a distinctive example of a predominantly FNMI school board that, in recent years, has prioritized student well-being and identity development over achievement. It provides insight into the transformative possibilities and constraints of trying to support FNMI students' socioemotional healing and cultural sustenance in a colonized system.

The rate of Native Americans attending institutions of higher education is much lower (24 percent) in comparison to their White peers (48 percent) (Ross et al., 2012). This chapter explores factors that contribute to the accessibility of higher education for Native American students (e.g., family, institutions, communities, and academic influences.) The extreme differences in the rate of Native Americans attending institutions of higher education are not attributed to one single problem. However, this chapter argues that it is imperative to see that an accumulation of experiences influence higher education accessibility and in order to increase the attendance of Native Americans in colleges and universities, a multifaceted approach informed by Tribal Critical Theory must be used.

We share developing understandings from a self-study in which two university-based teacher educators worked with Indigenous Pueblo community members, teachers, and educational assistants to integrate Indigenous culture, heritage, and language into PK-12 Pueblo classrooms. We found that our collaborative endeavors (between Pueblo educators and the two of us) are resulting in culturally relevant and culturally responsive curriculum being developed and implemented. By our stepping aside from our traditional and Western positions as teacher educators to positions of supporters, the cultural experts (the Pueblo language teachers) took the lead and grew in their capacities as educators. This work has had a transcendent impact on both of us. The significance of this self-study is framed within working with diverse educators who teach PK-12 Indigenous students and within our development as teacher educators working in an institution that places more value on Western knowledge and less value, in practice, on Indigenous knowledge.

In this chapter, we present critical race theory (CRT) with a focus on Latino critical theory (LatCrit) and its impact on Latinx educators, Latinx youth, and Latinx communities. We focus on identity inclusion and Latinidad as a way to increase critical consciousness of educators and Latinx youth, language rights, and feminist pedagogies of resistance. LatCrit frameworks are used as transformational resistance and afford a productive platform for developing critical understandings of the educational experiences of Latinx youth. We discuss relationships and community through the alignment of LatCrit and critical pedagogy and the application of critical theory and community-responsive pedagogy in increasing equitable outcomes in educational settings that support Latinx youth and families. We provide recommendations to address the challenges Latinx youth face and how Latinx educators can continue to support youth through a LatCrit framework, and a summary of possible solutions to consider. We close with some reflection and dialogue questions.

In this chapter, I expand on ideas about assessment originally put forward by Federico Waitoller and I in recent articles about a curriculum design that cross-pollinates elements of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The purpose of our original work was to address the intersection of racism and ableism in education and to position disability as an identity worth sustaining at the intersection of other forms of difference such as race and national origin. I discuss problematic legacies with the ways in which assessments have functioned to stratify and sort people along racial and ability hierarchies, and place educators in powerful positions of appraisal with consequences for students' belonging and learning in schools. Finally, I articulate additional elements and features of assessment that is designed to counter these legacies while positioning Black, Indigenous, and students of color (BISOC) with disabilities as capable and knowledgeable, along with examples drawn from the literature on CSP, UDL, and research methods for data collection with students with disabilities and diverse racial memberships and communicative repertoires.

Western schooling has contributed significantly to the colonization of Indigenous peoples in Alaska. Non-Native approaches continue to dominate in many schools that serve Indigenous P-12 students. This disconnect can lead to students and families who are disengaged from school (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008). In rural schools serving Indigenous students in Alaska, most school staff are hired from out of state, leaving youth vulnerable to practices that may not include their knowledge systems, languages and values. Unexamined practices by Western teachers can unknowingly perpetuate, “… ongoing legacies of colonization, ethnocide and linguicide” (McCarty & Lee, 2014). As one way to address this ongoing issue, faculty at the University of Alaska Anchorage College of Education developed a course called the Induction Seminar. The Seminar is a yearlong, online course for non-Native educators serving in rural Indigenous communities which combines an Alaska Department of Education teacher requirement for a multicultural course and an Alaska Studies course. The class content and processes familiarize Western educators with Indigenous ways of knowing and encourage them to examine their role in bringing about positive school reform. The course is increasingly requested by new-to-Alaska educators teaching in Indigenous communities and is making a small and hopeful impact in preparing educators to become more confident and competent in implementing culturally sustaining and revitalizing practices (Paris, 2014). This chapter describes how Western university instructors and P-12 educators used an “inward gaze” (Paris & Alim, 2014) to examine current practices and seek out pedagogies that support Indigenous education in rural Alaska.

This one-year qualitative study examined the role Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014) had on secondary pre-service teachers in an urban school. This study examined the journey of six pre-service urban high-school teachers in Arizona as they enact Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) in a year-long student teaching residency. Pre-service teachers worked with and learned from English Language Learners in various contexts. Factors that influenced their CSP practices are discussed through themes that emerged from interviews and classroom observations.