Culturally Responsive Pedagogy ACT Action Research
Team Members
Margie Appel, PhD
Professor Moosung Lee
Dr Ann Hill
Dr Aby Diplock
Teacher participants from Margaret Hendry School, Ainslie Primary, Forrest Primary, Monash Primary and Arawang Primary.
Rich cultural diversity in Australian schools offers teachers the opportunity to embrace diversity in their classroom practice. Yet, recent research suggests a significant proportion of Australian teachers are not coping with the challenges of culturally diverse classrooms, and require professional learning support in this area and that graduate teachers feel unprepared for increasing cultural diversity in their classrooms. Culturally responsive teaching has received little attention in Australia with considerable gaps in theory and practice. This project will implement and assess the effectiveness of professional learning and mentoring support of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy. ACT primary teachers with an interest in pedagogical responses to diversity will engage with the theory and practice of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy through regular workshops. Using an action research model, the teachers will identify a pedagogical challenge in their classrooms, redesign a unit of work to address that challenge, enact the redesigned unit, collect and reflect on relevant data.
This project will adopt a collaborative participatory action research approach which combines:
1. The application of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy with teachers as participants and co- researchers. This will develop in the context of 6 professional learning workshops over three school terms. The workshops will focus on Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and action research and include mentoring and coaching for participating teachers. In particular we wish to determine the extent and nature of teachers’ personal learning and experience with the Culturally Responsive Pedagogy program (teacher’s direct experience), and the ways these experiences and learnings have impacted their professional work in creating, teaching and assessing a unit of work with their class.
2. The qualitative assessment of these pedagogies will be to gain an in depth understanding of participant experience and tracing flow on effects through the school environment. Collaborative and participatory action research has growing influence internationally and in Australian educational research, contributing to teacher capacity-building and professional renewal in local settings. Such methodologies enable the systematic examination of the re-designing of pedagogic practice by teachers.
For teachers, the experience aims to shift their teaching and learning focus to include Culturally Responsive Pedagogy. For the teachers involved the professional learning in this program will foster and enhance a stronger culture of collaboration, and build teacher capacity to design, implement and evaluate both Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and action research.
For students, the program will support schools to develop an ethos which supports students ‘sense of belonging, trust and safety as well as an appreciation for the benefits that diversity.
For the schools and community the program seeks to generate greater awareness of and interest in Culturally Responsive Pedagogy. Teachers will be sharing and collaborating across schools, enabling it to spread within the participating schools, and to other schools in the ACT.
Appel, M. (2023). Teacher education for culturally responsive teaching: Report for ACT Education Directorate.
Apple, M. W. (2012). Can education change society? Routledge.
https://culturallyresponsivepedagogy.com.au/
For further information on this project, please contact Dr Margie Appel.