Understanding Teacher and Classroom Contextual Factors Associated with Observed Culturally Responsive Practices (CRP) in Predominantly Black, Urban Schools

Introduction: Scholars and educators have proposed strategies for improving teacher cultural responsiveness as an essential piece of the puzzle to address educational disparities among students from marginalized cultural, racial, or ethnic backgrounds. As school-based interventions designed to promote cultural responsiveness are being developed and tested, measurement of cultural responsiveness has lagged behind, posing a significant barrier to evaluating intervention impact. Although many studies using teacher self-report measures of cultural responsiveness attempt to control for social desirability bias in teachers, these measures by themselves give an incomplete picture of cultural responsiveness, given the challenge many teachers have in accurately identifying gaps in their skills. Observational measures of CRPs administered by independent, trained third party observers presents a potential solution; however, research examining the psychometrics of these measures is limited, and more research examining their utility is needed.

Method: We examined self-reported CRPs, teacher characteristics, and classroom contextual factors in relation to an observational measure of culturally responsive teaching strategies, a subscale of the Assessing School Settings: Interactions of Students and Teachers (ASSIST; Rusby et al., 2011) classroom interaction observation system. Participants included 192 (45% Black) teachers and classrooms (racial composition = 88% Black students) in 33 middle schools within two urban school districts serving predominantly Black youth. Multilevel mixed effects modeling adjusted for clustering within school, and teacher self-reported race and ethnicity, social desirability bias, gender, and tenure at the school.

Results: Teacher self-reported CRPs were significantly associated with observed CRPs in the classroom (beta = 0.23, p <.05). Observed CRPs trended lower in classrooms with higher proportions of Black students (beta = -0.74, p < .08) and were significantly lower in classrooms with both Black teachers and higher proportions of Black students (beta = -2.53, p <.01). Nonetheless, we found that Black teachers demonstrated significantly higher levels of CRPs relative to their White peers overall (beta = 2.37, p <.01).

Conclusions: Although it is promising to see alignment in teacher self-reported and observed CRP, suggesting some convergent validity of the measure, mixed methods research is currently underway to establish the content validity and reliability of this observational scale. Additional analyses will be conducted on demographic findings in a more diverse student and teacher sample. Implications for feasibility and utility of observational measurement of CRPs will be discussed.