This article describes an educational design research program situated within a professional development school that led to the development of the Cultural Proficiency Continuum Q-Sort (CPCQ). The CPCQ is a tool that enables teacher educators to systematically examine preservice teachers’ cultural competence concerning students who are minoritized, marginalized, and otherized within PreK–12 schools. The author provides background and rationales for the need of the CPCQ together with a discussion of the educational design research program that facilitated the design of the CPCQ. Findings for this study are discussed discursively addressing the following question: (a) What are the rationales and chain of decisions that warranted advancing the development of the CPCQ through each phase of an educational design research program? and (b) What are participants’ perceptions of the emerging tool’s effectiveness for facilitating critical self-reflection, inquiry, and dialogue concerning students who are minoritized, marginalized, and othered within PreK–12 schools? This study demonstrated that educational design research together with professional development schools are an ideal context to develop tools in a real-world setting aimed to address issues around racial and social justice and cultural competence within teacher education programs and PreK–12 schools and classrooms.

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This article details a semiotic analysis of a foundational textbook used widely across the field of supervision. The purpose of this study was to explore how signs associated with key concepts in education may actualize through the work of supervision. The textbook served as a proxy for supervisors’ professional disposition and subsequent praxis within educational leadership and teacher education programs and U.S. PreK-12 school systems. Additionally, investigators served as proxies for equity-minded supervisors through an analytical framework, which centers race and cultural differences within the broader context of social justice. This investigation drew from the following theoretical constructions: (a) Sociocultural Theory, (b) Critical Pedagogy, and (c) Culturally Responsive School Leadership. Investigators used mixed research methods to analyze and quantify qualitative data. Findings from this investigation illustrated supervision’s capacity to facilitate praxis aimed at disrupting ideologies of whiteness within the process and context of school. This article concludes with a discussion of opportunities for the field of supervision to consider for broadening its impact by utilizing asset-based pedagogies and centering race and cultural differences within the broader context of social justice and society at large.

This article presents findings from an education design research program to advance the development of the Cultural Proficiency Continuum Dialogic Protocol (CPCDP). The CPCDP is a primary data source that uses andragogical and asset-based pedagogies and approaches to assess and codify educators’ cultural competence systematically. Findings demonstrated the CPCDP's effectiveness in assessing and codifying preservice teachers’ cultural competence specific to PreK-12 urban schools and majority-minority student populations. Also, findings demonstrated that the development of pre-service teachers’ cultural competence is implicated by teacher educators’ and leaders’ levels of cultural competence.

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