Becoming Culturally Responsive: Equitable and Inequitable Translations of CRE Theory into Teaching Practice

Research on Culturally Responsive Education (CRE) to date has mostly focused on identifying the aspects of education that already work for Black, Indigenous, and Students of Color. Building on this important literature base, this qualitative study examines the implementation, rather than the identification, of CRE practices. The seven New York City public schools that participated in the study were making school-wide changes for CRE as part of a program for Competency-Based Education (CBE) for personalizing learning for students. Both CRE and CBE are employed in schools to address common issues associated with educational inequities such as irrelevant lessons, teacher biases, one-size-fits-all instruction, and systemic racism. Based on interviews with teachers at the study schools, our findings demonstrated that teachers translated CRE theory into their CBE practice in three key ways: (1) deficit practices, where instructional choices were treated as neutral; (2) access practices, where instruction was differentiated but was not culturally responsive; and (3) transformative practices, where student agency challenged traditional structures. We argue that for schools and educators to meaningfully grapple with the issues of power they seek to address by engaging in CRE, they must embrace and nurture a more radical CRE imagination that leads to deeper school transformation.

[Increase of educational inequity at the transformation to higher secondary schools in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic: low achievers and low motivated students as particular risk group]

When learning at home, students face higher demands in regards of self-regulated learning compared to learning at school. In order to cope with the demands of distance learning, high levels of self-management, self-motivation, and self-organization are required. This can be-according to the resource model of coping with developmental tasks (Fend et al. 2009)-supported by familial, school-related and personal resources. Based upon this theoretical approach, a survey was conducted with 593 students just after their transition to upper secondary schools in autumn 2021 on distance learning and relevant resources. They spent about one month in the new school before they had to cope with a 4-month long period of distance learning. Four regression models were estimated using step-wise inclusion of the different resources described in the paper. The analyses confirm above all the great importance of personal resources (academic achievement, learning motivation, general self-efficacy) for coping with the demands of distance learning. Low achievers and low motivated students prove to be particularly at risk in the context of distance learning. Therefore, this vulnerable group requires special attention and support both, in future periods of remote teaching as well as following the pandemic.

Educational equity amidst COVID-19: Exploring the online learning challenges of Bedouin and Jewish Female Preservice Teachers in Israel

Amidst COVID-19, teacher education has shifted to online learning. Although much is known about digital inequity in routine times, little is known about it under constrained conditions, particularly among women of minority groups. The study's goal was to explore the online-learning challenges encountered by (minority) Bedouin female preservice teachers (n = 41) compared to those encountered by (majority) Jewish counterparts (n = 60). Data from reflections (N = 101), focus groups (2), and (68) interviews underwent qualitative-constructivist content analysis. Group comparisons revealed socioculturally-based differential learning pathways, leading to educational inequities. We discuss possible ways to ensure equitable online teacher education using the "digital divide" perspective.

Accessible and Insightful Scientific Learning Experiences Using the Microorganism Haloferax volcanii

Early exposure to science is critical to incite interest in scientific careers, promote equity and retention in STEM fields, and increase the general understanding of the scientific method. For many educators, however, the myriad resources that many scientific experiments require are not readily available. Microbiology experiments in particular can often be inaccessible for a lot of classrooms. In addition, microbiological studies often involve eukaryotic microbes and bacteria while excluding an entire domain of life: archaea. Archaea are more closely related to eukaryotes than are bacteria, and although all prokaryotic cells lack a nucleus, various key aspects of the cell biology of archaea and bacteria are fundamentally different. In addition to being useful for teaching about the diversity and evolution of living organisms, these differences between archaea and bacteria can also be harnessed to teach and emphasize other important biological topics. Haloferax volcanii is a non-pathogenic model haloarchaeon that allows for safe, affordable, and accessible microbiological experiments, as the requirement of high-salt media to grow H. volcanii presents a low risk of contamination. Here, we describe how H. volcanii can be used in the classroom and outline a protocol demonstrating their resistance to a broad spectrum of antibiotics, underscoring the distinct cell biology of bacteria and archaea. Finally, we introduce strategies and protocols to perform this and other H. volcanii experiments such that they can be performed based on the resources available in a high school or undergraduate classroom.

How many students could continue learning during COVID-19-caused school closures? Introducing a new reachability indicator for measuring equity of remote learning

This paper proposes a new reachability indicator to analyze the effectiveness of remote learning policies adopted by ministries of education in response to school closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The indicator provides the share of students that can potentially be reached by remote learning policies given the availability of necessary household assets such as radios, televisions, computers and internet access. The results of this analysis outline the stark inequities in access to remote learning, suggesting that at a minimum, more than 30 % of schoolchildren globally cannot be reached by remote learning policies due to the high variation in access to assets for remote learning that exists within and between the world regions. The analysis finds that wealth and area of residence are key factors affecting the reachability of remote learning policies, suggesting that children who reside in rural areas and/or belong to the poorest households in their country are at the greatest risk of being left behind.

School choice & social stratification: how intra-district transfers shift the racial/ethnic and economic composition of schools

The liberation model hypothesizes that school choice liberates students from underperforming schools by giving them the opportunity to seek academically superior schooling options outside of their neighborhoods. Subsequently, school choice is hypothesized to diminish stratification in schools. Data from one urban school district is analyzed to test these hypotheses. We specifically examine which factors influence the propensity for parents to participate in choice, and how school choice changes the racial/ethnic and economic composition of schools. We further examine how school choice influences similar changes within distinct sociogeographic areas within the district. We find that families who are zoned to more racially/ethnically and economically diverse schools in sociogeographically diverse areas are more likely to participate in school choice. We also find that intra-district choice is associated with a slight increase in social stratification throughout the district, with more substantial stratification occurring in the most demographically diverse areas and schools.