Educating Culturally Responsive Teachers: A Coherent Approach. SUNY Series, Teacher Preparation and Development.

Overview & Synopsis

This book examines what is needed to accomplish the task of staffing U.S. schools with culturally responsive teachers, discussing the specific elements of teacher education programs needed for the country's diverse public schools. The book focuses on the importance of recruiting and preparing a diverse teaching force, proposing a vision for restructuring the teacher education curriculum, reconceiving the pedagogy used to prepare prospective teachers, and transforming the institutional context in order to support the recommended curricular and pedagogical changes. It explains that the typical response of adding a course or two on multicultural education without altering the established teacher education curriculum cannot meet the goal of culturally responsive teaching. Five chapters focus on: (1) "The Shifting Demographic Landscape"; (2) "Developing Fundamental Orientations for Teaching a Hanging Student Population"; (3) "Fostering Culturally Responsive Teaching"; (4) "Modeling the Practice of Culturally Responsive Teaching"; and (5) "The Institutional Context Needed To Educate Culturally Responsive Teachers." The book includes exemplary practices that offer guidance for educators in their work of restructuring teacher education for diversity. (Contains approximately 600 references.) (SM)