Keywords
culturally responsive teaching, teacher education, anti-racist teaching
Abstract
This article draws from a study conducted on pre-service teachers enrolled in a teacher education program. The study examines students’ understanding and misunderstanding of what constitutes culturally responsive teaching. This is a mixed methods study. A Likert-type survey and qualitative questionnaires were used to collect data. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze survey data, and a thematic coding method was used for analysis of qualitative data. The results of the study show that pre-service teachers are aware and knowledgeable of the term culturally responsive teaching as the term is widely used in the teacher education program in which they were enrolled. Further, results show that the characteristics of culturally responsive teaching are misunderstood as a cultural add-on teaching method that does not disturb the status quo of teaching. The study underscores the need to re-examine how culturally responsive teaching is taught in teacher education programs.
DOI
10.15760/nwjte.2026.1.2
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Sommers, Shirley M.
(2026)
"Rethinking Teacher Education Programs: (Mis)understanding of Culturally Responsive Teaching Among Teacher Candidates,"
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education: Vol. 21
:
Iss.
1
, Article 2.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15760/nwjte.2026.1.2