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Simulation technology has been used as a viable alternative to provide a real life setting in teacher education. Applying mixed-reality classroom simulations to English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teacher preparation, this qualitative case study aims to examine how pre-service teachers (PSTs) practice culturally and linguistically responsive teaching to work with an English learner (EL) avatar and other avatar students.

Using an embedded single case study, three PSTs’ teaching simulations and interviews were collected and analyzed.

This study found PST participants made meaningful connections between theory and practices of culturally and linguistically responsive teaching, particularly by connecting academic concepts to students’ life experiences, promoting cultural diversity, using instructional scaffolding and creating a safe environment. Nevertheless, they needed further improvement in incorporating cultural diversity into content lessons, creating a challenging and supportive classroom and developing interactional scaffolding for ELs’ language development. The findings also show that while PST participants perceived simulation technology as very beneficial, expanding the range of technological affordances could provide PSTs an opportunity to undertake a full range of critical teaching strategies for ELs.

This research contributes to broadening the realm of mixed-reality technology by applying it to ESOL teacher education and has implications for both ESOL teacher educators and simulation technology researchers.

As the P-12 student landscape continues to grow in cultural and linguistic diversity, teacher preparation programs have yet to adequately prepare teacher candidates' teaching and learning skills in meeting the academic and socio-emotional needs of diverse student demographics. This article examines teacher candidates’ cultural competence and cultural responsiveness to enhance candidates' educator preparation and stimulate candidates' personal growth development as developing culturally and linguistically responsive new teachers. While many teacher preparation programs require one multicultural or diversity education course, the authors examine a minority serving institution's integration of a cultural immersion experience for teacher candidates as one way of supporting their development as culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogues. This paper aims at supporting school districts' need of culturally competent new teachers who have the content knowledge and pedagogy to teach and support culturally and linguistically diverse children. Recognizing this need, this qualitative analysis highlights the importance of and a need for cultural and linguistic competence among teacher candidates. Findings from this study provides a means by which universities can implement cross-cultural coursework and field-based experiences to prepare culturally responsive teacher candidates.

This chapter investigates the impact of a teacher preparation program that includes specific attention to the needs of bilingual learners on participants’ subsequent teaching practices. Specifically, this mixed methods retrospective study examines graduates’ reports of their current teaching practices as well as their perceptions of the Teaching English Language Learners (TELL) program’s impact on these practices. Multiple-choice survey data were analyzed quantitatively to identify trends among reported practices and perceptions. Open-ended survey and interview data were analyzed qualitatively to identify interrelated themes within teachers’ detailed, first-hand accounts of their pre-service and in-service experiences. The results showed that there was variety with respect to whether particular linguistically responsive practices were routine, used occasionally, or rarely. There was also a difference with respect to whether such practices were perceived to be the result of having participated in the program. Notably, the most frequently used practices attributed to the TELL program involved teaching language (TL) to facilitate content learning. Other aspects of the teacher preparation program supported effective practices for academic content learning, but only TELL coursework and experiences facilitated practices that emphasized academic language development. These results suggest that programs created to improve the preparation of teachers to work with bilingual learners in mainstream classroom contexts must make a special effort to develop teachers’ skills in regard to language teaching, especially practices that focus on language beyond the word-level. There are limitations to the study because of the small number of participants and the fact that they were self-selected as program participants.

Purpose – To provide educators with an overview of issues and strategies important for preparing preservice teachers to plan instruction, engage students, and assess learning in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter reviews sociocultural, sociolinguistic, and cognitive literature that informs differentiated instruction for linguistic diversity. It then offers a case study example of a preservice student teaching seminar where this knowledge was put into practice.

Findings – Content provides detailed information about the design of a preservice seminar that included the role of a nationally piloted performance assessment. It demonstrates how preparing the assessment portfolio provided a vehicle for a structured and useful focus on diversity within the seminar.

Research limitations/implications – The chapter highlights literature that is specifically useful for preservice teachers and their instructors who are seeking to address the specific needs of English Language Learners and the culturally diverse population of students found in U.S. classrooms. This is important to those who seek to expand this attention to diversity within general teacher education practices.

Practical implications – This chapter serves as a resource for all clinical instructors, providing ideas for incorporation into their clinics and classrooms.

Originality/value of paper – Culturally responsive teaching and a specific focus on teaching English Language Arts for linguistically diverse students are infused in clinical teacher education practices rather than as “add-on” practices.

This chapter explores how TESOL teacher educators used self-study to respond to educational policies for emergent bilingual learners (BLs) and their teachers. The purpose was to examine tensions, challenges, and opportunities in our efforts as teacher educators to prepare teachers to teach BLs in mainstream classes through a state-mandated sheltered English instruction (SEI) course. Data sources, including emails, course artifacts, meeting agendas, and journals, pre and post surveys and course assignments were analyzed using mixed methods. Practitioners and participants agreed one SEI course is insufficient. In a coherent approach to preparing mainstream teachers to teach language, learning would be reinforced from coursework to the classroom. Without self-studies that provide an informed response to external policies that shape teacher education, the danger is new policies result in no substantive change.

This study aims to examine how teacher candidates of Color (TCoCs) experienced and perceived culturally responsive teaching across three teacher education programs at a predominately White institution in the USA. At the time of the study, the campus was reeling from a series of racist incidents on- and off-campus, and the teacher education programs were attempting to recruit more TCoCs.

Drawing on a critical race theory counternarrative approach and qualitative research focus-group interviews, the authors centered the voices of seven TCoCs and their experiences with culturally responsive teaching in their coursework.

The TCoCs experienced and perceived culturally responsive teaching as promising yet fleeting, missing the mark, and a misuse of culture and language that resulted in harm. The TCoCs urge teacher education to hire racially–ethnically–linguistically diverse faculty, provide affirming spaces for TCoCs, and curricular transformation.

Study findings contribute to recent calls for teacher education programs to attend to the lived experiences, concerns and expectations of future teachers of color.

Hollie (2011) maintains that pedagogy is the most frequently overlooked facet of culturally responsive teaching. This chapter puts forward a promising pedagogy for working with diverse learners, particularly those from ethnic minorities. It opens by providing a brief background to the New Zealand context in which my research has been conducted, before moving on to identifying key UNESCO principles relating to cultural and linguistic diversity, and examining key tensions and challenges that impact on the development of relevant pedagogies for diversity in different international contexts. Relevant pedagogies identified in the international literature are then summarized. Next, examples from case study data on teachers in New Zealand schools are presented. These data highlight four key aspects of a promising pedagogy: knowing, doing, being, and belonging. Consideration of how these aspects influence the pedagogical objective of becoming suggests that, while generating relevant practices (doing) is more effective in combination with theoretical input (knowing), this is insufficient without concurrently engendering a sense of being with and belonging in diverse communities of learners. The final model for a promising pedagogy is therefore more than just a simple, linear process, but the components doing, knowing, being, and belonging are viewed as part of a dynamic, interactive, and cyclical model.

This paper aims to describe how engaging in an inquiry-as-stance reflexive approach informed the design of a graduate-level early childhood social studies methods course to support the professional identity development of multilingual/Latinx, Black, Indigenous, people of color (ML/L/BIPOC) teacher candidates.

Nested within a theoretical construct that articulates “unlearning as a disruptive force” (Dunne, 2016), the author used a parallel process that modeled the teaching of social studies methods grounded in critical reflections of students’ cultural and linguistic assets. In so doing, the author shares how she models culturally and linguistically responsive-sustaining pedagogy in practice.

The findings illustrate that in this course, students begin unlearning internalized deficit narratives that they have been socialized to believe about themselves and, often, their students.

This study is based on only four semesters of teaching one graduate-level methods course to ML/L/BIPOC early childhood educators at one institution, research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

Through unlearning, ML/L/BIPOC learn to recognize their assets, dispositions, skills and capacities more fully and, thus, are more able to enact culturally responsive-sustaining pedagogy once in their own classrooms. As such, this study has value for applying critical, identity-centered and asset-based pedagogies in teacher preparation programs.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the findings from focus group interviews conducted with librarians and library staff, faculty and students. It highlights the significance of implementing inclusive teaching and culturally responsive strategies in instructional settings and interactions with library patrons and seeks to emphasize the importance of developing guidelines, best practices and effective strategies.

Using focus groups, this study interviewed librarians and library staff, faculty and students. This research approach identified, reviewed and assessed existing programs and practices in instruction and library interactions.

The findings from this paper indicate that while faculty and librarians are making individual efforts to promote inclusivity in teaching and interacting with patrons, many participants expressed the necessity for institutional-level training, guidelines and good practices on how to achieve and implement culturally responsive and inclusive teaching strategies.

The methodology utilized in this study can be adapted by other libraries or institutions aiming to explore the practice of inclusive pedagogy and culturally responsive teaching within their own context. The insights from the study inform the development of strategies that librarians, faculty and staff can employ to integrate inclusive and culturally responsive teaching into their instruction and services for the wider academic community.

A pressing educational concern is how to provide effective education for the growing population of dual language learners (DLL) in early childhood settings. Given the robust findings that family involvement promotes children’s academic success as well as recognition of parents’ “funds of knowledge,” one pathway to provide a culturally and linguistically responsive classroom environment for DLLs is to form collaborative relationships between parents and teachers of DLLs. The purpose of this chapter is to describe Project TAPP (Teachers and Parents as Partners), a community of practice (CoP) composed of parents and teachers of preschool dual language learners. The chapter describes the framework of Project TAPP, findings related to participation, and lessons learned.