A Focus on Quality Objective 3

As we dream about our future in the preparation of high quality teachers at Tarleton State University, without any doubt, we know we want to be better than we are today. A consistent and welcomed voice in our transformation journey has been from Maya Angelo, and reinforced by our US PREP Transformation Specialist, Laura LaCouix, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.” Tarleton State University had been doing the best they could, until they collectively learned about the new era of teacher preparation in the Fall of 2019, an era where the coherence of a collective why and a shared responsibility became central in their advancement of a quality teacher preparation program. External stakeholders were utilized as assets to help to evaluate and assess, as well as, strategically plan transformation efforts. This journey began during a time in which our nation had both political and social unrest.

From the very beginning, tremendous efforts were made to bring faculty together around a collective why, to design a shared purpose, and to cultivate a community culture focused on change. This was an important step in our transformation if we wanted to embrace change and grow. Leadership guided the C&I Faculty to acknowledge that though the existing and current legacy of the Tarleton Teacher Educator Preparation Program was producing good teachers, we could and had to do even better. Together, a department of faculty developed a mindset to always view the current and future obstacles as opportunities. This would be instrumental in our progress and success in this self-study.

This Self-Study focused on solving a ‘Problem of Practice’ aligned to US PREP Quality Objective 3: Teacher Educator Effectiveness. Tarleton State University could not ensure that teacher educators are effective in preparing novices to work with all students, especially our historically underserved students. Our efforts were grounded in research that Tarleton had to model culturally responsive teaching and hold high expectations for teacher candidates to be proficient in culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies. In order to do this, faculty need to be trained on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Through our work with US PREP and Raise Your Hand Texas (RYHT), we were able to formulate a continuous improvement plan for our Educator Preparation Program. Included in our plan is the need for increased faculty development. We realized the need for DEI to be placed at the core of our practice.

Current research and literature demonstrate we are not alone in failing to prepare our teachers in the principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice. Furthermore, we are similar to the status quo in that our faculty lack the knowledge, skills, and teaching practices to effectively teach and model the principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice. This lack of research on effective methods to employ transformation and change efforts where faculty examine their own practice, as well as, strong evaluation tools and methods provided Tarleton with a strong purpose for this self-study.

When considering the perpetuation of an achievement gap, the increase in students of color, years of research and advocacy for culturally responsive pedagogy, it would make sense that faculty and instructors would embrace and model CRT practices in their own instruction, and thus be a critical element of the teacher preparation program; however, even teacher educators struggle putting culturally responsive pedagogy into practice. Although Townsend (2002) calls for “mandatory teacher certification in culturally responsive pedagogy,” and there is little disagreement concerning the fact that CRP should be at the forefront of our discussions with preservice teachers, there is little attention to how teacher educators actually "prepare culturally responsive educators and how their work in higher education institutions is actualized" (Townsend, 2002, p. 727; Han, et al., 2014, p. 291). Additionally, "The intersection between teacher educators’ self-efficacy and the construction of their identities by students could be a critical direction for further research on CRP" (Han, et al., 2014, p. 308). Our study sets out to first examine the Culturally Responsive Teaching Self Efficacy of our faculty, then discover how their beliefs and practices are actualized and impacted throughout professional development and self study efforts.

Teacher educators and researchers began advocating for culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy over twenty years ago (Ladson-Billings, 1994, 1995); however, little attention has been focused on the impact of developing culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy with a systematic examination of changing one’s own practice (Appleget et al., 2020; Garbett, Ovens, & Thomas, 2018; Han et al., 2014).

If we strive to develop teachers who embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion the faculty that are responsible for this preparation must understand and model equity literacy.

This study works to shift the paradigm of professional development in a way that not only encourages a vision and shared understanding around diversity, equity, and inclusion, but takes this understanding to a deeper level to a change in our practice resulting in transformative education where faculty model their abilities and desire to be perceived by preservice teachers as lifelong learners eager to take risks, engage with intercultural learning, solve problems, be flexible, embrace creativity, and work innovatively in a continuous dialogue with an emphasis on meaning-making and reflective action (Kalantzis and Cope, 2012). Professional development followed by and intertwined with the use of critical self reflection (Finlay, 2008; Finlay & Gough (2003), critical friendships, and ongoing cycles of transforming practice.

In order to accomplish these goals, our faculty are gaining Professional Development on Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Pedagogy from:

• US PREP: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

• Raise Your Texas: Teaching Works

• edTPA: Community of Practice