When School Wasn’t “School”: Developing Culturally Responsive Practice during the COVID-19 Lockdowns
This article emerged from my study of three alternative-certification teachers, or teacher learners as they tried to enact culturally responsive practices while navigating their first year of teaching and taking graduate courses for initial certification. These teacher learners worked to develop the...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2023-07-01
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| Series: | Education Sciences |
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| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/13/7/684 |
| _version_ | 1797589621122531328 |
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| author | Jonathan Baize |
| author_facet | Jonathan Baize |
| author_sort | Jonathan Baize |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | This article emerged from my study of three alternative-certification teachers, or teacher learners as they tried to enact culturally responsive practices while navigating their first year of teaching and taking graduate courses for initial certification. These teacher learners worked to develop their understanding and capacities to enact a culturally responsive pedagogy but found that standardization of content and conceptions of what constitutes “good students”, appropriate classroom conduct, and micro-managed professional learning communities all created environments hostile to their attempts to develop as equity-minded educators and culturally responsive practitioners. However, their experiences changed once the COVID-19 pandemic closed these teacher learners’ schools to in-person instruction and sent them home to instruct online for the remainder of the spring 2020 semester. Free from the constrictive macro-structures and socio-political contexts in their physical workplaces, their planning showed them employing more culturally responsive practices and considering those practices more deeply. Once outside the cultures of practice, formed around neoliberal conceptions of success and measuring learning, these teacher learners became the sole mediators of the conflicting knowledge sources of their jobs and their university methods courses. On their own they began to confront the ways educational institutions stubbornly cling to hegemonic concepts of their communities and valorize work centered on concepts of knowledge and ways of knowing that bear little resemblance to society’s current reality. Away from the wider cultures of their schools during the COVID-19 lockdown and aided in mediating their own development using a dialogically structured lesson planning template inspired by—the Heuristic for Thinking About Culturally Responsive Teaching (HiTCRiT)—the teacher learners focused their instruction on their students making both their students’ learning and their own conceptions of CRP more real and their students’ learning more equitable. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-11T01:09:08Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-cd4b0187a45b4453bfe69a596201b102 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2227-7102 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-11T01:09:08Z |
| publishDate | 2023-07-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Education Sciences |
| spelling | doaj.art-cd4b0187a45b4453bfe69a596201b1022023-11-18T19:03:00ZengMDPI AGEducation Sciences2227-71022023-07-0113768410.3390/educsci13070684When School Wasn’t “School”: Developing Culturally Responsive Practice during the COVID-19 LockdownsJonathan Baize0Director of Education, Clover Learning, Louisville, KY 40205, USAThis article emerged from my study of three alternative-certification teachers, or teacher learners as they tried to enact culturally responsive practices while navigating their first year of teaching and taking graduate courses for initial certification. These teacher learners worked to develop their understanding and capacities to enact a culturally responsive pedagogy but found that standardization of content and conceptions of what constitutes “good students”, appropriate classroom conduct, and micro-managed professional learning communities all created environments hostile to their attempts to develop as equity-minded educators and culturally responsive practitioners. However, their experiences changed once the COVID-19 pandemic closed these teacher learners’ schools to in-person instruction and sent them home to instruct online for the remainder of the spring 2020 semester. Free from the constrictive macro-structures and socio-political contexts in their physical workplaces, their planning showed them employing more culturally responsive practices and considering those practices more deeply. Once outside the cultures of practice, formed around neoliberal conceptions of success and measuring learning, these teacher learners became the sole mediators of the conflicting knowledge sources of their jobs and their university methods courses. On their own they began to confront the ways educational institutions stubbornly cling to hegemonic concepts of their communities and valorize work centered on concepts of knowledge and ways of knowing that bear little resemblance to society’s current reality. Away from the wider cultures of their schools during the COVID-19 lockdown and aided in mediating their own development using a dialogically structured lesson planning template inspired by—the Heuristic for Thinking About Culturally Responsive Teaching (HiTCRiT)—the teacher learners focused their instruction on their students making both their students’ learning and their own conceptions of CRP more real and their students’ learning more equitable.https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/13/7/684culturally relevant pedagogyculturally relevant pedagogymultiliteracydemocratic educationeducational reformeducational equality |
| spellingShingle | Jonathan Baize When School Wasn’t “School”: Developing Culturally Responsive Practice during the COVID-19 Lockdowns Education Sciences culturally relevant pedagogy culturally relevant pedagogy multiliteracy democratic education educational reform educational equality |
| title | When School Wasn’t “School”: Developing Culturally Responsive Practice during the COVID-19 Lockdowns |
| title_full | When School Wasn’t “School”: Developing Culturally Responsive Practice during the COVID-19 Lockdowns |
| title_fullStr | When School Wasn’t “School”: Developing Culturally Responsive Practice during the COVID-19 Lockdowns |
| title_full_unstemmed | When School Wasn’t “School”: Developing Culturally Responsive Practice during the COVID-19 Lockdowns |
| title_short | When School Wasn’t “School”: Developing Culturally Responsive Practice during the COVID-19 Lockdowns |
| title_sort | when school wasn t school developing culturally responsive practice during the covid 19 lockdowns |
| topic | culturally relevant pedagogy culturally relevant pedagogy multiliteracy democratic education educational reform educational equality |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/13/7/684 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT jonathanbaize whenschoolwasntschooldevelopingculturallyresponsivepracticeduringthecovid19lockdowns |