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Beyond Cultural Awareness: Prospective Teachers' Visions of Culturally Responsive Literacy Teaching

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Page 1: Beyond Cultural Awareness: Prospective Teachers' Visions of Culturally Responsive Literacy Teaching

This article was downloaded by: [Central Michigan University]On: 21 December 2014, At: 09:29Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: MortimerHouse, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Action in Teacher EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uate20

Beyond Cultural Awareness: Prospective Teachers'Visions of Culturally Responsive Literacy TeachingJennifer D. Turner aa University of Maryland , College Park , USAPublished online: 03 Jan 2012.

To cite this article: Jennifer D. Turner (2007) Beyond Cultural Awareness: Prospective Teachers' Visions of CulturallyResponsive Literacy Teaching, Action in Teacher Education, 29:3, 12-24, DOI: 10.1080/01626620.2007.10463456

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01626620.2007.10463456

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Page 2: Beyond Cultural Awareness: Prospective Teachers' Visions of Culturally Responsive Literacy Teaching

Beyond Cultural Awareness : Prospective Teachers ’ Visions of - 1 . Culturally Responsive Literacy I eachzng Jennifer D. Turner University of Maryland, College Park

ABSTRACT: Preparing prospective teachers to work effectively with culturally diverse students remains an ongoing challenge for literacy teacher educators. Current teacher education prac- tices help prospective literacy teachers to enhance their cultural awareness and sensitivity, but they do not necessarily enable teachers to translate their cultural understandings into cultur- ally responsive literacy instruction. This article explores the concept of vision as a reflective tool for helping prospective teachers articulate their ideals about culturally responsive literacy teaching. Analyses of 20 prospective teachers’ visions statements revealed five themes of cul- turally responsive literacy teaching: Elementary classrooms should serve as literacy communi- ties; literacy teachers should serve as orchestrators within these communities; students should be active community members; learner-centered curriculum is the key to literacy development; and promoting ownership of literacy for diverse students is an essential societal goal. However, analyses also identified two blind spots, which represented conflict and controversy within the preservice teachers’ vision statements: classroom management and parental involvement. Findings from the study suggest that visioning may hold important benefits for preservice liter- acy teachers and literacy teacher educators who are concerned with providing culturally re- sponsive teaching in elementary classrooms.

Preparing prospective teachers to work effec- tively with culturally diverse students remains an ongoing challenge for literacy teacher edu- cators. Many prospective teachers experience difficulty developing strong multicultural knowledge, skills, and dispositions because they have limited experiences with diversity (Hollins & Guzman, 2005). At the same time, “learning to teach poses a number of chal- lenges for novices, including developing a conception of subject matter and how to teach it . . . [and] developing a conception of teach- ing and learning and their role as a teacher” (Smagorinsky, Cook, Moore, Jackson, & Fry,

2004, p. 10). Helping prospective teachers work through these thorny issues and con- struct coherent images of effective and respon- sive literacy teaching for diverse students proves to be a daunting task for many literacy teacher educators.

As an instructor at a large mid-Atlantic university, I confront this complex challenge in my work with prospective literacy teach- ers. With the majority of the teacher candi- dates in my methods courses coming from White middle-class backgrounds, I have al- ways viewed my literacy methods courses as cultural construction zones-a space where

Address correspondence to Jennifer D. Turner, University of Maryland at College Park, 2233 Benjamin Building, College Park, MD 20742; e-mail: [email protected].

12 Action in Teacher Education Vol. 29, No. 3

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Beyond Cultural Awareness 13

new understandings and insights into cultural diversity can be created (Allen & Hermman- Wilmarth, 2004). Over the last several years, I have incorporated activities designed to promote cultural awareness and sensitivity into my elementary reading methods courses, including reading and responding to multi- cultural literature, reviewing videos of liter- acy teaching in diverse classrooms, and read- ing and writing cultural autobiographies. These activities are congruent with current literacy teacher education practices that en- hance prospective teachers’ capacity to teach students in a culturally responsive manner (Boling, 2004; Florio-Ruane, 2001; Xu, 2000), and they were quite successful. By the end of the methods courses, many prospec- tive teachers had begun to challenge their as- sumptions about cultural diversity; they broadened their understanding of diversity in elementary classrooms; and they developed greater sensitivity and empathy toward di- verse learners.

Yet something always seemed to be miss- ing. Although these activities facilitated pre- service teachers’ understanding of student di- versity, they did not help teacher candidates to utilize this knowledge to construct concep- tions of instruction that were responsive to elementary students’ cultural experiences and backgrounds. Many prospective teachers in my methods courses reported having diffi- culty with articulating their own conceptions of culturally responsive literacy instruction, especially if their mentor teachers did not model and value this approach to teaching. It became increasingly apparent that my preser- vice teachers needed opportunities to formu- late their images of culturally responsive literacy teaching. By providing such opportu- nities in my reading methods course, I hoped that the preservice teachers could “move from being aware of cultural differences to the development of ‘habits of mind’ that in- corporate an understanding and valuing of students’ cultures and recognition of the need to consider those cultures in teaching prac- tices” (Lenski, Crawford, Crumpler, & Stall- worth, 2005, p. 4).

Visioning as a Pedagogical Tool for Preparing Culturally Responsive Literacy Teachers

In a recent literacy methods course, I experi- mented with a pedagogical activity called oi- sioning. Visioning is a process that “provides a structure for expressing and examining exist- ing beliefs” (Squires & Bliss, 2004, p. 758) and helps prospective teachers construct and artic- ulate their images, or visions, of ideal class- room practices. Teacher visions are important because they represent teachers’ personal defi- nitions of good teaching (Hammerness, 2001). As such, teacher visions capture moral ele- ments of teaching and shape their understand- ings of and practice within classrooms (Borko & Putnam, 1996; Calderhead, 1996).

Teacher visions are a relatively new but critical concept in literacy teacher education, for two reasons. First, visions oftentimes serve as touchstones for literacy teachers, particu- larly in the demanding and complicated world of classroom teaching, because they reflect teachers’ “hopes and dreams for themselves, for their students, and even sometimes their communities” (Hammemess, 2004, p. 34). In this sense, visions can serve as a source of per- sonal strength and professional integrity for all teachers, given that they are oftentimes pas- sionate about and committed to their ideals about good teaching and are empowered to stay the course in the midst of conflicting de- mands, mixed messages, and increasing pres- sures from local and state mandates (Duffy, 2002; Hammemess, 2004). Second, research suggests that culturally responsive teachers thoughtfully adapt and adjust literacy pro- grams, curricula, and materials to meet the needs of students from diverse backgrounds (Duffy & Hoffman, 1999; Turner, 2005). Cul- turally responsive teachers are committed to designing and implementing instruction that strongly supports literacy learning because they hold visions of success for diverse stu- dents rather than images of deficiency and failure (Delpit, 1995; Gay, 2000; Ladson- Billings, 1994).

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14 JENNIFER D. TURNER

The good news is that teachers can de- velop vision in the early stages of their profes- sional careers. In her extensive work on teacher visions, Hammerness (2001, 2003, 2004) found that novice teachers made in- structional decisions; developed understand- ings of teaching, learning, and schooling; and even considered important professional changes (e.g., changing schools, leaving the profession) using their visions as a point of ref- erence. Given this research, she concluded that beginning teachers’ visions are indeed “substantial and concrete, vivid and powerful, and stable and consistent across time” (Ham- merness, 2003, p. 45). Yet novice teachers of- ten need support in developing and articulat- ing productive visions of practice, particularly when they are working with diverse students. In his recent work on vision, Duffy (2002), a distinguished literacy scholar, contends that literacy teacher educators can help preservice teachers to construct their own visions of lit- eracy teaching as well as evaluate pedagogical “situations and choose to adapt and modify research-based techniques in light of their re- spective visions” (p. 332).

Determined to help my prospective teach- ers articulate their conceptions of culturally responsive literacy teaching, I asked them to complete a vision project as their final course assignment. As part of this project, teacher candidates were asked to write an essay de- scribing their images of good culturally respon- sive literacy teaching within five broad dimen- sions: sights and sounds of the classroom environment, the role of the teacher, the role of students, the relationship between curricu- lum and student learning, and the relationship between the classroom and the society that he or she would like to have (Hammerness, as cited in Squires & Bliss, 2004). Given my em- phasis on student diversity in my literacy methods courses, I also designed questions to help elicit the prospective teachers’ beliefs about culture and their conceptions of cultur- ally responsive teaching (see appendix).

When I initially discussed the vision proj- ect with the prospective teachers in my course, most were surprised that the assignment fo- cused so squarely on their personal concep-

tions and images of teaching. “We don’t need references?” they asked in disbelief. Some prospective teachers were a little skeptical about the visioning project, but by the last day of classes, nearly all of them were eager to share their visions with the class. Once classes were over, I was so excited to begin reading the tall stack of papers on my desk because I was curious to see what types of culturally re- sponsive visions my students had developed. The visions that were revealed in those proj- ects compose the heart of this article.

Design of the Study

In this study, I employed a practitioner- researcher design, which enabled me to serve as course instructor and researcher (Cochran- Smith & Lytle, 1999). As such, I addressed two critical questions in this inquiry: What vi- sions of culturally responsive literacy teaching are articulated by prospective teachers after a semester-long methods course? What do prospective teachers’ visions reveal about their understanding of teaching elementary reading to diverse students?

Participants and Setting

Twenty prospective teachers participated in this study: 14 were females, 6 were males. The cohort was also racially and ethnically diverse: 14 students were Caucasian, 1 was African American, 2 were Afro-Caribbean, 2 were Hispanic, and 1 identified as multiracial. As graduate students in an intensive 15-month initial teacher certification program, most had earned bachelor’s degrees in psychology and sociology. Several students had earned profes- sional degrees and had worked several years in other fields, such as law and business.

All 20 prospective teachers were enrolled in a literacy methods course: Reading Meth- ods in Elementary Schools. This course was the third in a four-course sequence required for initial elementary teaching certification. As the instructor, I developed this 3-hour course around three unifying objectives: first, to in- troduce evidence-based instructional skills

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and pedagogical strategies for teaching ele- mentary reading; second, to support reflective and effective classroom practice; and, third, to explicitly address issues of cultural diversity in elementary reading education. I met these course objectives by taking a social construc- tivist approach to teaching; put simply, I viewed my teacher education classroom as “a community of learners . . . one in which all class members including the teacher read, write, and speak to accomplish real goals and take part in their own learning” (Danielson & LaBonty, as quoted in Craig, Bright, & Smith, 1994, p. 97). Consistent with a social con- structivist approach, I engaged the preservice teachers in my course in a variety of literacy activities, including writing a reader autobiog- raphy and sharing personal artifacts from their reading lives, writing poetry, evaluating liter- acy teaching from video cases, and reading multicultural and critical literature in small book clubs. In addition to these course-related activities, the prospective teachers were re- quired to observe in an elementary classroom for 2 days each week. These observation-based field experiences were situated within a profes- sional development school network, with ap- proximately 75% of the sites serving elemen- tary students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Within the broader programmatic con- text, the literacy methods course was part of the block of subject-specific methods courses (math, science, social studies) that the preser- vice teachers took during the fall semester. In addition, the preservice teachers were concur- rently enrolled in a diversity course. Building on the foundational diversity course taken during the summer, this diversity course en- couraged preservice teachers to carefully ex- amine how student diversity influences aca- demic achievement and schooling. However, the preservice teachers had not written vision statements related to culturally responsive teaching as a part of these diversity courses.

Data Collection and Analysis

As a practitioner-researcher, I collected data in my literacy methods course from August

2004 to December 2004. Prospective teachers’ vision papers served as the primary source of data. The vision papers ranged from 9 to 25 pages, with a mean of 14 pages. Secondary sources of data, including observations of five class sessions and researcher notes and ana- lytic memos, were used for triangulation (Mer- riam, 1998).

I systematically coded and analyzed the data using qualitative content analysis proce- dures (Patton, 1990). In the first phase, infor- mal analysis, I used the five dimensions of vision-that is, classroom environment, role of teachers, role of students, curriculum, and societal goals-as an initial coding scheme. I wrote the five dimensions as categories on chart paper, then cut and pasted illustrative excerpts from the prospective teachers’ vi- sions statements.

The second phase, theme formation, pro- ceeded in two stages. In the first stage, I looked for patterns within and across the data that were related to each of the five broad di- mensions described by Hammerness (2001). From these patterns, I developed themes that described the prospective teachers’ visions. For example, the idea that elementary stu- dents learn to read more effectively in class- rooms that are designed as motivational, sup- portive communities was consistent across the prospective teachers’ written vision state- ments. I also examined the observational data from the class sessions to see if the theme of community was mentioned during our discus- sions, and it appeared in three of the five ses- sions. In my research journal, I noted in sev- eral entries that classroom community was “something that I need to keep coming back to, because my students really need to under- stand that learning to read is a social process. It’s not just going on in a student’s head, it’s happening through interactions with others” (October 12, 2004). In this way, the second- ary data (the field notes and research journal entries) were used for triangulation purposes, helping me to clarify, refine, and revise the emergent themes related to the five research- related dimensions of vision. In the second stage, I reviewed the data set several times, us- ing an open-coding system to develop themes

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(Strauss & Corbin, 1990). This analytic process was much more inductive, meaning that the themes that emerged were grounded within the data rather than in the research literature (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). These in- ductive analyses led to two additional themes, which were also refined using secondary sources in the triangulation process.

In the final phase, theme confirmation, I verified all of the themes by reviewing the prospective teachers’ visions statements to “ensure theoretical rigor and to ground . . . analysis in conceptual precision” (Lenski et al., 2005, p. 6). In addition, I engaged in peer debriefings (Merriam, 1998) with a colleague familiar with literacy teacher education and this study.

Findings

One of the major goals of this study was to de- scribe the visions of culturally responsive liter- acy instruction that prospective teachers artic- ulated after taaking the literacy methods course. Data analyses revealed that the preser- vice teachers held complex and complicated understandings of culturally responsive liter- acy instruction. Within their vision state- ments, the preservice teachers articulated well-developed, clear ideals about culturally responsive literacy teaching, as represented by five themes: Elementary classrooms should serve as literacy communities; literacy teach- ers should serve as orchestrators within these communities; students should be active com- munity members; learner-centered curriculum is the key to literacy development; and pro- moting ownership of literacy for diverse stu- dents is an essential societal goal. These five themes constitute important areas of focus (Hammerness, 2003) within the preservice teachers’ vision statements because they are “sharply defined, with distinct images and in- teractions” (p. 45). However, the preservice teachers also held conflicting, even contradic- tory, views about two important elements of culturally responsive literacy teaching: class- room management and parental involvement. These themes, then, represent what Hammer-

ness (2003) calls blind spots within the preser- vice teachers’ vision statements. In the follow- ing sections, I describe these areas of focus and blind spots as contrasting sets of themes within the prospective teachers’ visions of cul- turally responsive reading instruction.

Areas of Focus Within Prospective Teachers’ Visions of Culturally Responsive Literacy Instruction

Classroom environments as literacy communities. The prospective teachers in this study envi- sioned their classrooms as “literacy communi- ties” that supported the literacy learning of cul- turally diverse elementary students. All 20 preservice teachers emphasized five critical fea- tures in their descriptions of literacy communi- ties for diverse students: (1) clear guidelines, rules, and expectations, (2) a “well-stocked, at- tractive” classroom library with books of vary- ing levels, genres, and topics; (3) collaborative literacy activities, including read alouds, peer writing sessions, and literature circles; (4) ac- cess and exposure to high-quality multicultural literature; and (5) high levels of social interac- tion and connectedness. In their vision state- ments, the prospective teachers explicitly ac- knowledged that it was their responsibility to create and maintain a vibrant reading commu- nity that motivated diverse students to read. To that end, they identified classroom practices, such as providing opportunities for student choice (90%), developing personal relation- ships with students (70%), and connecting with students through literature (60%).

Literacy teachers as orchestrators. Nearly all of the prospective teachers in this study de- scribed culturally responsive literacy teachers as orchestrators within the classroom. They envisioned orchestrating literacy instruction for diverse students in two critical ways. First, they thought that it was important to design and implement authentic learning experiences that drew on the interests and experiences of diverse students. The following preservice teacher’s comment was typical: “I believe in creating authentic experiences for diverse children because they will be motivated to

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Beyond Cultural Awareness 17

learn if their reading and writing is meaningful to them.” Others connected authentic peda- gogies to instructional strategies and affective outcomes, as this comment illustrates:

Effective reading teachers use authentic strategies, like asking children to draw a picture and write about something that is important to them, or teaching them spelling by having them write personal stories. Authentic strategies allow chil- dren to express themselves and build confidence in their abilities as readers and writers.

Many prospective teachers related the concept of authenticity to phonics instruction and word study. One preservice teacher, for ex- ample, drew a sharp contrast between the skill-and-drill approach to phonics that she observed at her internship and the authentic approaches that she favored:

My mentor [teacher] teaches a phonics program each day for 80 minutes. The in- struction is scripted and consists simply of drill, drill, and more drill, with a moun- tain of worksheets. [But] she and the stu- dents are disinterested in these lessons. I think phonics should be taught in an au- thentic and balanced way, because that will encourage my students to understand the reading process rather than memoriz- ing the mechanics of reading.

Like this teacher candidate, most preser- vice teachers (80%) thought that authentic constructivist-oriented approaches to teach- ing phonics and word study were beneficial for diverse students, and they hoped to or- chestrate their phonics instruction in ways that reflected this commitment.

Second, the prospective teachers viewed themselves as orchestrators who could adapt and modify literacy instruction. Adaptive skills were essential to their visions of cultur- ally responsive teaching because, as one teacher candidate explained, “there is more than one way to effectively teach children in your classroom, so teachers should be knowl- edgeable about a variety of good reading practices and know how to implement them.”

The prospective teachers in this study demonstrated this essential subject matter knowledge by identifying numerous adaptive instructional practices, including supple- menting packaged literacy text sets with mul- ticultural books and materials (100%), inte- grating students’ interests and experiences into the standard literacy curriculum (85%), incorporating a variety of grouping practices (e.g., literature circles, guided reading groups, buddy reading) and activities (e.g., writing circles, think-pair-share, readers theater) into the traditional literacy instructional block (75%), and designing lessons for multi- ple learning styles (55%). They believed that these adaptive techniques were critical to their teaching roles because, as one teacher candidate explained, “as a culturally respon- sive teacher, I believe it is my job to try to learn about each of my students and modify my instruction to encourage their interests and build from their prior knowledge.”

Students as active community members. The prospective teachers envisioned students as active community members who could assume responsibility for their own and others’ literacy learning. Sixteen candidates (80%) reported that they wanted to help students become self- directed readers because, as one teacher candi- date observed, “motivated readers become mo- tivated learners with high self-confidence that carries over into all areas of their lives both in and out of school.” Others placed particular emphasis on involving students in social learning and classroom interactions:

I want students to become more involved with the decisions being made in the classroom. It is so easy for students to sit and not participate in class or during group work. But if I try to get them in- volved in making the classroom rules, stu- dents will play a more active role in the classroom environment, and they will be more interested and involved with every- thing else.

Overall, the prospective teachers in this study believed that this active role was particularly important for culturally diverse elementary students because, as one teacher candidate

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18 JENNIFER D. TURNER

explained, “these children can sometimes be overlooked or marginalized in today’s class- rooms.” As such, the teachers also viewed cul- turally responsive literacy instruction as a crit- ical means of supporting students’ active literacy learning. One preservice teacher said,

As a reading teacher it is important to un- derstand different cultures. Children from diverse backgrounds will not learn suc- cessfully if they don’t feel valued. If they feel respected, then they will take more risks and they will be motivated to read.

As such, literacy research on teaching students from culturally diverse backgrounds supports these ideals (Au, 1998; Au & Raphael, 2000; Delpit, 1995).

Learner-centered curriculum as the key to literacy development. The prospective teachers envisioned learner-centered literacy curricu- lum as a critical key to literacy development. This teacher candidate’s comment was repre- sentative of the group as a whole: “In my cul- turally responsive reading instruction, I want to meet my students where they are. Though it is important to teach the standard curricu- lum, it is also important to include lessons that connect to students’ interests, experi- ences, and lives.”

Virtually all the preservice teachers de- scribed how the knowledge and insights gained from the process of getting to know their students would enable them to make cur- ricular decisions that addressed students’ strengths and needs. As one prospective teacher succinctly put it, “good teachers find out what makes kids tick and then use that in- formation to scaffold students to achieve- ment.” As such, most of the prospective teach- ers perceived culture to be a critical part of what makes kids “tick,” and their vision state- ments reflected their focus on understanding students’ cultural worlds and using that infor- mation to transform the literacy curriculum. This teacher candidate said it best:

For me, having a vision of culturally re- sponsive reading instruction means being open to learning about students and their cultural traditions, families, and commu-

nity experiences, and adapting and chang- ing the curriculum to reflect the interests and lives of my students.

Promoting ownership of literacy as an essen- tial societal goal. The majority of prospective teachers in this study viewed promoting own- ership of literacy, especially for diverse stu- dents, as an essential societal goal. When stu- dents take ownership of literacy, they see literacy as being personally meaningful and so use it for their own purposes (Au, 1998; Turner & Kim, 2003).

Eighty- five percent of prospective teachers wrote about promoting ownership of literacy as a means of enhancing students and society in their vision statements. These statements are representative of the group as a whole:

1 want to help my students read more pro- ficiently, but 1 also want them to read more willingly. There are too many kids in our classrooms who know how to read, but choose not to. My goal is to help my stu- dents become lifelong readers, because so- ciety needs educated citizens.

My job is to help my culturally diverse stu- dents realize that reading is for them and something that they can use for their en- tire lives.

1 believe the ability to read is a gift. As a teacher, I want to empower all my stu- dents to read and discover that reading can be enjoyable. That will help them to lead fulfilled lives as adults in our society.

Although the majority of the prospective teachers envisioned ownership as an essential goal for all literacy learners in their class- rooms, four candidates explicitly discussed why it was particularly important for cultur- ally and linguistically diverse students. Two teacher candidates briefly explained that due to the injustices in the system, children from diverse backgrounds do not have equal access to learning. So they don’t have the lit- eracy skills to succeed in mainstream society. The other two teacher candidates described the importance of ownership for linguistically diverse students and families, noting that to

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Beyond Cultural Awareness 19

many ESL students and families, the skill of reading in English is likened to the key for a more successful life. So reading teachers are responsible for teaching these children En- glish because that will help them make it in our society.

Echoing the arguments of literacy re- searchers (Bartoli, 1995; Delpit, 1995; Turner, 2005), these prospective teachers believed that classroom teachers must provide greater access to and more equitable opportunities for cultur- ally and linguistically diverse children to ac- quire school and mainstream literacy practices.

Blind Spots in Prospective Teachers’ Visions of Culturally Responsive Literacy Instruction

Classroom management in multicultural schools. There was overwhelming consensus in the prospective teachers’ vision statements about the importance of classroom management and its role in effective literacy instruction. Ac- cording to one preservice teacher, “classroom management is an important factor in creating a reading community. Teachers should be en- couraging and nurturing rather than authori- tarian. This will help kids from all back- grounds to become readers.’’ Another wrote,

Classroom management is important in providing a productive learning environ- ment for everyone. Students should know and understand their roles in the class- room and what they should be doing dur- ing different subjects. My policies on classroom management are fairly basic and simple. Students should respect each other and the teacher, act appropriately, and spend their time on learning.

Overall, the preservice teachers agreed with the positive sentiments toward classroom man- agement, as expressed in the preceding com- ments. Despite this high level of awareness, however, classroom management represented a blind spot in the preservice teachers’ vision statements, in two distinct ways. First, a sizable percentage of the teacher candidates (40%) held color-blind views of classroom manage-

ment; in other words, they did not discuss how cultural background may shape teachers’ and students’ expectations of classroom behavior. According to Weinstein, Tomlinson-Clarke, and Curran (2004), “conventional classroom management is presented as if it were cultur- ally neutral, rather than a White, middle-class construction” (p. 26). This prospective teacher’s comment exemplifies the culturally neutral discourse of classroom management within the vision statements:

Because I know that children develop in different ways at different times, I believe the first thing I will do is set the standards for behavior. During the first week of school I will go over the consequences for behavior management issues so that all my students have a clear understanding of such. I will implement these procedures almost immediately, because I believe in order to achieve the best results with any behavior management program, the teacher must be consistent. I will do as I say and stay true to my words, meaning if 1 say someone must stay in for recess, I will not rescind on this statement. I will also explicate the routines of the classroom and my expectations for behavior and completion of work.

Although this preservice teacher acknowl- edges the presence of student differences in the classroom at the beginning of the state- ment, this response strongly conveys the idea that teachers set the standards of behaviot in the classroom based on their expectations and ideals and that student diversity need not be a consideration. Overall, then, this group of preservice teachers failed to discuss how culture might play into classroom manage- ment policies, even though they envisioned themselves as culturally responsive literacy teachers in their future classrooms. Weinstein and colleagues (2004) contend that “defini- tions and expectations of appropriate behav- ior are culturally influenced” (p. 26) and sug- gest that culturally responsive teachers develop pedagogical practices “in which cul- tural diversity becomes a lens through which we view the tasks of classroom management”

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20 JENNIFER D. TURNER

(p. 32). Unfortunately, the prospective teach- ers in this group were blinded by their own culturally neutral perspectives on classroom management and did not take into account how teachers’ and students’ cultural back- grounds may influence the organizational, be- havioral, and motivational systems within multicultural classrooms.

Second, over half of the preservice teach- ers (60%) believed that if they were enacting culturally responsive literacy pedagogy, class- room management problems would be non- existent. This group of prospective teachers assumed that if they implemented the tenets of culturally responsive pedagogy, such as re- spect for culture and emphasis on classroom community, the management issues in their classrooms would be negligible. As one pre- service teacher put it, “if I have been success- ful at establishing a reading community, many issues of classroom management are likely to take care of themselves. Students who want to read and discuss books are far less likely to exhibit disruptive behavior.” Al- though culturally responsive teachers have seemingly few disciplinary problems in their classrooms (e.g., Ladson-Billings, 1994), this does not mean that preservice teachers should take for granted that this particular approach to teaching will prevent classroom management issues. Yet close analysis of the vision statements suggests that several preser- vice teachers in this study made this erro- neous assumption. For example, classroom management did not receive as much atten- tion as the other areas of focus within their vision statements; the teacher candidates of- fered brief descriptions of their future class- room management policies, and their man- agement plans were vague. Four teacher candidates in this group did not address the issue of classroom management at all in their vision statements, and their lack of awareness and attention provide further evidence that classroom management was indeed a blind spot within their future plans for culturally responsive practice.

Parental involvement. In their vision state- ments, all 20 prospective teachers noted that parents were an important part of students’ lit-

eracy learning and development. One preser- vice teacher eloquently stated,

Teachers should create partnerships with parents to maximize the learning experi- ence for students. Parents should feel as though they are an integral part of the learning process. When teachers and parents support each other, success is achieved. In my own classroom I plan to communicate with parents often. By ef- fectively communicating with parents through many different means, goals for success can be set and worked towards.

However, despite their strong support for parental involvement, most of the prospec- tive teachers (85%) described home-school relationships as “challenging” because the teachers perceived culturally diverse parents to be unsupportive and lacking strong educa- tional values. The comments of these three preservice teachers were representative of the majority:

Some children live in really violent com- munities and homes, so those kids concen- trate on being safe, not their homework.

I know that it is important to work with culturally diverse parents, but I am not sure how to do it. They probably don’t have time to come to school to see about their children’s progress because they are working two or three jobs, or they have a lot of children to take care of at home. Ed- ucation is low on their list of priorities.

The majority of my students’ parents speak broken English or do not speak Eng- lish at all . . . [and] the majority of low readers have been those students who do not enjoy the English linguistic support of their Spanish-speaking parents (i.e., read- ing and conversing in English at home). So it’s a real problem for reading teachers.

I t is important to mention that 15% of the preservice teachers envisioned the process of building relationships with parents to be diffi- cult because of a variety of barriers-for ex- ample, language differences, work schedules,

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limited time for teachers. However, this small group of teacher candidates also identified several strategies that they believed could ul- timately enhance communication and con- nection with parents from culturally and lin- guistically diverse backgrounds, such as meeting at places other than school, creating flexible opportunities for parent participation, and working with interpreters to translate im- portant school documents and be present at parent-teacher conferences. Yet what is most striking about the prospective teachers’ vision statements is that fact that they all imagined that their future relationships with culturally and linguistically diverse parents would be challenging. Like the preservice teachers in other teacher education classrooms (e.g., Lazar, 2004; Pang 6I Sablan, 1998), the teacher candidates in this study viewed cul- turally and linguistically diverse parents as “problems” and “negative influences” rather than as resources for children’s literacy learn- ing and reading achievement. Because of these deficit views, the preservice teachers were blinded. Despite their strong beliefs in the importance of parental involvement, they anticipated their work with culturally and lin- guistically diverse parents to be uncertain, frustrating, and difficult; thus, their plans for fostering positive home-school communica- tion were quite limited.

Discussion

This article explores the concept of vision, highlighting its potential to serve as a reflec- tive space where preservice teachers articu- late their ideals about good literacy instruc- tion, discuss their values and dispositions toward student diversity, and construct com- pelling images of culturally responsive liter- acy pedagogy. Based on the study’s findings, vision may be a useful teacher education tool because it helps prospective teachers move beyond cultural awareness and toward cultur- ally responsive teaching. Prospective teachers typically make generic remarks about “good” teachers and teaching for diverse children- such as “Good teachers make a difference in

the lives of diverse students” and “Good teachers respect student diversity”-but they may not know how to make this culture hap- pen in their classrooms. In contrast, the teacher candidates in this study articulated strong images of culturally responsive teach- ing based on five clearly defined ideals: Ele- mentary classrooms should serve as literacy communities; literacy teachers should serve as orchestrators within these communities; students should be active community mem- bers; learner-centered curriculum is the key to literacy development; and promoting owner- ship of literacy for diverse students is an es- sential societal goal. Equally important, within each of the five areas of focus (Ham- merness, 2003) that the preservice teachers identified within their vision statements, they were able to describe strategies for teach- ing literacy in a culturally relevant manner- for example, by building a positive classroom community, using multicultural materials, adapting instruction, and orchestrating a learner-centered literacy curriculum. Re- searchers (e.g., Delpit, 1995; Gay, 2000; Hollins 6I Guzman, 2005) argue that this type of pedagogical knowledge is critical be- cause cross-cultural understanding and empa- thy are not enough; today’s literacy teachers need to know how to translate their multicul- tural knowledge, skills, and competencies into literacy teaching that is responsive to and effective for diverse students. Thus, vi- sion may be an essential tool for preservice teachers who are in the process of developing new conceptions of teaching literacy for di- verse students because it “helps teachers de- velop a clearer sense of their purposes for teaching . . . and authorizes them to think for themselves” (Duffy, 2002, p. 335).

Equally important, the concept of vision may help liteiacy teacher educators to recog- nize the blind spots within preservice teachers’ conceptions of culturally responsive literacy instruction. Findings from the current study demonstrate how classroom management and parental involvement represented challenging issues for the preservice literacy teachers in my course. As the literacy methods instructor, I did not cover these topics, because I thought

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22 JENNIFER D. TURNER

that the preservice teachers had already learned them in previous courses (e.g., the program’s diversity sequence), and in light of all the material that I needed to cover (e.g., grouping practices, materials, comprehension, phonics), I did not think that I had enough time to delve into these issues. Yet teacher ed- ucation scholars have recently argued that in- creased time and attention should be given to these critical topics in literacy methods courses. In a recent survey of student teachers and 1st-year practitioners working in urban schools, Morrow and colleagues (Morrow, Casey, 6r Gambrell, 2006) report classroom management and parent involvement as two of their top three concerns. Weinstein and colleagues (2004) contend that teacher educa- tors “must begin to make cultural diversity an integral part of the conversation” (p. 27) about classroom management because preser- vice teachers need to understand how to or- ganize motivational and productive classroom environments for culturally diverse literacy learners. Similarly, literacy teacher educators such as Barnes (2006), Kidd and colleagues (Kidd, Sanchez, 6r Thorp, 2004), and Lazar (2004) have argued that greater emphasis on working with diverse families must be pro- vided within literacy methods courses because prospective teachers need time and practice to develop strategies for communicating and connecting with diverse parents. Thus, by identifying these and other blind spots within preservice teachers’ vision statements, literacy teacher educators have a greater capacity to develop relevant course readings and activities that “confront contradictions, challenge as- sumptions, and deepen knowledge, in turn lay- ing the ground for more complex personal and theory-based professional knowledge” (Ham- merness, 2003, p. 53).

Implementing a vision project might also help literacy teacher educators to clarify and define their ideals and purposes for teaching in teacher preparation programs. Although I have advocated a social constructivist perspec- tive on education for years, much of the con- tent in my methods course had focused on what I believed to be important, and it re- flected my preferred methods of teaching liter-

acy. The vision project, however, helped me to shift from a teacher-centered perspective to- ward a student-centered approach to the methods course. Since then, I have noticed that my teaching has become focused on my prospective teachers, and although the vision project is the final paper, we talk throughout the semester about their ideals of good cultur- ally responsive teaching and how these visions might be fulfilled using various literacy peda- gogies and strategies. The vision project also serves as a constant reminder of my purpose as a literacy teacher educator: Although it is cer- tainly appropriate to share my image of cultur- ally responsive literacy teaching in my meth- ods courses, my ultimate goal should be to support my prospective teachers in the devel- opment of their own visions. Like Hammer- ness (2004), I believe that the most important objective of my literacy methods courses is to “support student teachers in fully articulating, honing, and elaborating their visions so that they are vivid and concrete” (p. 41).

In conclusion, vision has great potential as a teacher education tool that facilitates reflec- tion, elicits beliefs and ideals, and uncovers values and dispositions. As such, vision has the capacity to expand teachers’ images of suc- cessful teaching for diverse literacy learners in American schools (Delpit, 1995). However, to fully understand vision as a transformative teacher education practice, it must be studied carefully and systematically throughout the professional life span (Duffy, 2002). Given the current focus on the induction years, an im- portant next step would be future research that describes how beginning literacy teachers develop visions of culturally responsive prac- tice in teacher preparation programs and to what extent they use those visions to guide lit- eracy instruction in their classrooms.

Appendix: The Vision Project

The Vision Project (VP) is designed to be a culminating project for the advanced elemen- tary reading methods course. As part of this as- signment, you will develop a statement reflect- ing your vision for teaching elementary

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reading in a culturally responsive manner.

say that examines your own philosophy about culturally responsive reading instruction in el- ementary schools by addressing the following quest ions:

backgrounds. J o d of Literacy Research, 30,

Au, K. H., & Raphael, T. (2000). Equity and liter- acy in the next millennium. Reading Resemch Quarterly, 35, 170-188.

Barnes, C. (2006). Preparing preservice teachers to teach in a culturally responsive way. Negro Ed-

Your vision should be a thoughtful, reflective es- 297-319.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

. - ucational Reuiew, 57,85-100.

Bartoli, J. (1995). Unequal opportunity: Learning to read in the United States. New York: Teachers College Press.

‘ What does it mean to be a culturally responsive reading teacher in an ele- mentary classroom? . . What - - does culture mean to you, and what role does it play in elementary literacy teaching and learning? As you envision your classroom, what sights/sounds would be there? What would learning feel/be like? (a) Describe the classroom environment. (b) De- scribe the classroom library. (c) De- scribe your learning centers (if you have them). (d) Describe your classroom management policies and routines. What roles will you play as a culturally responsive reading teacher in the class- room? (a) Describe goals, texts, and grouping patterns for reading instruc- tion. (b) Describe the role of phonics in your reading instruction What roles will diverse students and parents play in learning to read? What are views about the current read- ing curriculum used in this district? As a culturally responsive literacy teacher, what are you doing for society? What types of literacy learners do you hope to produce for society? I

A portion of this article was presented at the 55th annual National Reading Conference, Miami, Florida, December 2005.

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Jennifer D. Turner is an assistant professor in reading education in the Department of Cur- riculum and Instruction at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Turner’s current research focuses on the vision development of preservice reading teachers and the visioning practices of effective reading teachers of African American students. Dr. Turner teaches undergraduate and graduate reading methods courses in the elementary education program.

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