Case 4: Modeling Culturally Responsive Teaching Dispositions

We, Nicole and Monica, are teacher educators at a public research university in Hawai’i. The teacher education program is a four-semester 2-year cohort program. Teacher candidates (TCs) complete methods courses and fieldwork. We collaborate in the field to supervise cohort students. Monica is the cohort coordinator and professor, and Nicole is an instructor in the department. Collaboratively, we plan seminars, teach, and coordinate field observations with TCs and their assigned mentor teachers.

In the Fall 2020 semester, we received a list of twenty students who were assigned to their undergraduate Elementary Education Multilingual Learning (EEML) cohort. The EEML program is a dual-licensure program. TCs graduate with initial teaching licensure in elementary education and a license in English for speakers of other languages (ESOL). The EEML program provides TCs with theory and practice in culturally responsive pedagogy ([CRP]; Gay, 2018; Hammond, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 1995), scaffolding instruction (Tedick & Lyster, 2019), and assessment equity (Gottlieb, 2016) for working with multilingual learners.