Teachers’ Beliefs and their Manifestations: An Exploratory Mixed Methods Study of Cultural Intelligence in Pedagogical Practice

Douglas Kennedy University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Intrinsic interest Self-efficacy

Self-Awareness

Culturally relevant pedagogy

CQ Drive CQ Strategy

Student voice

Equitable relationships

Critical evaluation

In situ capabilities • Action—informal signaling • Development of social capital with students

• Knowledge—dynamic knowledge of individual students • Gendered expectations • Religious expectations • Economic contributions to family • Impact of socioeconomic status on access to materials • Communication norms

Model for culturally intelligent teaching

Discussion and implications •  Differences across CQ levels (motivation, awareness, value placed on student knowledge and

perspectives, engagement with sociocultural issues) •  Intersection of high-CQ teachers’ practices with Ladson-Billings’s (1995; 2009) culturally

relevant pedagogy •  Alignment of CQ construct with teachers’ motivations and awareness; need for further refinement of in situ

capabilities; teachers may not see practices through an intercultural lens •  Model above represents the relationship between CQ and CRP—threshold of manifestation: undergirding

capabilities needed to enact culturally relevant pedagogical practices •  Implications

•  Need to address teachers’ intercultural capabilities, reframe teaching as an intercultural act as well as pedagogical and social justice act

•  Study may point to means to address persistent deficit attitudes of teachers towards their culturally diverse students

•  Complements scholarship on dispositions and CRP •  Addresses descriptions of classroom behaviors of teachers and a framework to assess and develop

undergirding intercultural capabilities

Threshold of manifestation

Statement of the problem •  Disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes between demographic group

•  Changing demographics of students in United States’ public schools •  Static demographics of teachers

•  Calls to better prepare teachers to navigate cultural differences •  Need to develop the intercultural capabilities of teachers

•  Purpose of the study: understand how teachers conceive of cultural differences and how they navigate cultural differences in their classrooms

Research Questions 1.  How do teachers at different levels of CQ development teach culturally diverse students? 2.  How do teachers at different levels of CQ development enact intercultural capabilities? 3.  How does the construct of CQ align with the beliefs and practices of effective culturally

relevant teachers? 4.  What is the nature of the relationship between CQ and culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP)?

•  CQ four-factor model—robust empirical base and high predictive validity (Matsumoto & Hwang, 2013; Leung, Ang, & Tan, 2014)

•  Address how to assess and develop teachers intercultural capabilities—currently missing in culturally relevant pedagogy

•  Fills gaps in CQ research—1) need for qualitative studies, 2) address behaviors of teachers

Research Design •  Multiple case study, purposeful sample

•  Teachers at different levels of CQ development

•  Single school site •  Mixed methods

•  Quantitative data •  Survey—57 out of 62 teachers •  CQ self-reported assessment—

52 out of 62 teachers •  Qualitative data

•  Semi-structured interviews—18 •  Observations—174 hours

Results •  CQ Assessment

Figure 2 Distribution of research CQ scores by quartile

Results CQ Qualitative Findings •  CQ Drive convergence •  CQ Strategy convergence

•  Awareness of self, student perspectives and experiences

•  Understanding of culture •  CQ Action divergence—pedagogical not

intercultural •  CQ Knowledge divergence—students as

source, knowledge in service

Figure 1 CQ four factor construct

Results CRP Qualitative Findings •  Equitable relationships: high CQ teachers

created more equitable learning communities

•  Making meaning: high CQ drew out student knowledge, students as co-creators of knowledge, student voices foregrounded

•  Critical evaluation: high CQ teachers engaged students in critical inquiry and explorations of social justice issues

References •  Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465-491. •  Ladson-Billings, G. (2009). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. •  Lincoln, Y. & Guba, E. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE. •  Leung, K., Ang, S., & Tan, M. (2014). Intercultural competence. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1, 489-519. •  Matsumoto, D., & Hwang, H. (2013). Assessing cross-cultural competence: A review of available tests. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 44(6), 849-873. •  Yin, R. (2014). Case study research: Design and methods (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Additional references and data for the study may be obtained with permission from the author.