No abstract

Demographic data show an increasingly diverse student population in all urban settings. This contrasts with the teacher force, which is predominately middle class, female, monolingual, and of European ancestry. This discrepancy adds complexity to an already complex profession. To bridge this cultural gap, researchers advocate for a change in the teaching paradigm, in which teachers understand the relationship between students' culture and learning. This paradigm is called Culturally Responsive Teaching. The participants of this study were twenty-two secondary mathematics and science teachers. The researcher analyzed whether some of the strategies used in mathematics and science urban classrooms were studentcentered as well as culturally responsive. Results show that teachers used a variety of student-centered strategies, such as discovery learning, centers and group work, and games. Similarly, the teachers incorporated their students' culture into their mathematics and science classrooms, by including their students' interests in the lessons, exposing students to similar role models, and using real-life examples that students found relatable.

Demographic data show an increasingly diverse student population in all urban settings. On the other hand, there continues to be a discrepancy about the student population and the teacher force, as the majority of the US teachers are predominately middle class, female, monolingual, and of European ancestry. This discrepancy adds complexity to an already complex profession. To bridge this cultural gap, researchers advocate for a change in the teaching paradigm, in which teachers understand the relationship between students’ culture and learning. This paradigm is called Culturally Responsive Teaching. This study followed 22 secondary mathematics and science teachers. The goal was to analyze some of the strategies used in urban schools, while at the same time determining whether these strategies were culturally responsive. Results show that teachers incorporated their students’ interests into the curriculum, making connections with real-life and allowing students to make many choices.

Metaphors representing the practice of teacher educators were the data for this collaborative self-study by a small group of teacher educators from across the USA. Seventy-five pre-service teachers and practicing teachers enrolled in teacher education courses were asked to create metaphors to represent the teaching practices of the authors, who were their professors at the time. Qualitative analysis of these data revealed that many of these students believed that effective teaching springs from a kind of teacher magic -a mysterious force arising from the personal characteristics of the teacher rather than from any purposeful selection from a repertoire of instructional strategies -developed over time. For the researchers, these results posed a challenge for reworking their teaching to make the art of teaching more visible and accessible.