Development and Preliminary Analysis of a Rubric for Culturally Responsive Research

Abstract

Researchers and practitioners have struggled to promote optimal academic, behavioral, and postschool outcomes for historically marginalized youth from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. While there is a growing body of evidence-based interventions in special education, the extent to which these interventions are culturally responsive remains unexplored. Culturally responsive research (CRR) has gained increased attention in social sciences. The authors developed a 15-item rubric to evaluate the cultural responsiveness of research. They applied the rubric to six studies in transition education identified as high-quality intervention studies to determine the extent to which these met the criteria for CRR. Results from this analysis demonstrated that while none of the studies were indicative of CRR across all rubric items, strengths in question relevancy, sampling, participant description, and data collection strategies were noted.

The dancing trope of cross-cultural language education policy

“…This entails the inclusion of culture and community views as well as their needs and interests in principle research standards. Such standards include formulating a research problem, relevancy of research, literature review, theoretical framework, data collection strategies, presentation of findings, analysis and interpretation of findings in addition to the dissemination of findings (Trainer & Ball, 2014).…”

Effects Of Explicit Reading Comprehension Strategy Instruction For English Learners With Specific Learning Disabilities

“…Culturally responsive research. According to Trainor and Bal (2014), research can be viewed as a situated cultural practice. From inception to dissemination, research is "culturally and socially mediated and negotiated" (Arzubiaga, Artiles, King, & Harris-Murri, 2008, p. 310).…”

“…The ecology of the cognitive strategy instruction that Jiménez provided in his qualitative study in a bilingual special education classroom was aligned with participants' experiences and preferences; moreover, throughout the study participants' cultural and personal identities were affirmed through the use of individualized schema-building activities and the integration of culturally relevant text. None of the 19 studies that used an experimental research design satisfied criteria for cultural responsiveness, as outlined by Trainor and Bal (2014). In a majority of the experimental studies, authors described the interventionist by providing a title (e.g., teacher, graduate assistant) and by explaining credentials (e.g., having a teaching license) but did not describe enough demographic background information to determine relational positions between participants and interventionists (e.g., membership to participants' cultural group, proficiency levels with participants' native language, power status).…”

“…First, very few studies to date have examined reading comprehension strategy instruction in naturally occurring inclusive classroom settings (Dole, Brown, & Trathen, 1996;Fuchs et al, 1997). Given that research is culturally situated (Trainor & Bal, 2014), behavior in the research setting is influenced by contextual factors (e.g., relationships that depict positions of power and authority between the interventionists and participants). Findings from studies that were conducted in contrived or clinical settings reflect high levels of internal validity but weak external validity.…”

“…That is, participants were perceived to have valuable skills and knowledge (Klingner & Soltero-González, 2009), the interventionist used multicultural literature, native language support, and realia during lessons (Klingner & Soltero-González, 2009), and the interventionist reported on the nature of the relationship (i.e., insider/insider) between himself and the participants (Trainor & Bal, 2014…”