Faculty Fellows 2003

Preparing Culturally Responsive Teachers:
Infusing Multicultural Content Throughout the Teacher Education Curriculum

Carol S. Weinstein
Department of Learning and Teaching, Graduate School of Education

Demographic data indicate that our K-12 population is becoming increasingly diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, social class, culture, and language background, while our teaching force remains overwhelmingly White, middle class, and monolingual English. To address this cultural gap, GSE teacher education programs currently include a course entitled Individual and Cultural Diversity. Although the course provides a critical introduction to issues of cultural diversity, it is insufficient to prepare culturally responsive teachers. Thus, the overall goal of the proposed project is to infuse multicultural content throughout the teacher education curriculum so that issues of diversity are treated more saliently, more systematically, and with greater depth.

By infusing multicultural content throughout the teacher education curriculum, we seek to foster six dispositions and capacities characteristic of the culturally responsive teacher (Villegas & Lucas, 2002): 1) an understanding of one’s own sociocultural identity, biases, and ethnocentrism; 2) an awareness of the ways that schools both reflect and reinforce the discriminatory practices of the larger society; 3) an affirming attitude toward students from culturally diverse backgrounds; 4) knowledge of students’ cultural backgrounds; 5) a commitment to building caring, inclusive classrooms; and 6) the ability and willingness to practice “culturally responsive pedagogy.”

Carol Weinstein (Ed.M., Ed.D., Harvard Graduate School of Education) came to Rutgers in 1974. She has served as Associate Dean for Teacher Education from 1984-1986, as chairperson of the Department of Learning & Teaching from 1993-1996, and is currently coordinator of the program in Early Childhood/Elementary Education and chair of the Teacher Education Committee, the standing committee of the GSE that is responsible for considering and recommending to the GSE faculty changes to the structure and requirements of the teacher certification programs offered by the GSE. Dr. Weinstein’s area of scholarly activity focuses on classroom organization and management. She is the author of two textbooks on classroom management, as well as numerous chapters and articles on this topic and on teacher education students’ beliefs about caring and control. In 2000, she received a “Contributing Researcher Award” from the American Federation of Teachers for “Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice in Effective Classroom Management.” More recently, Dr. Weinstein has begun to explore the ways in which issues of cultural diversity are intertwined with classroom management. Relevant publications include “Toward a conception of culturally responsive classroom management,” co-authored with Saundra Tomlinson-Clarke and Mary Curran (Journal of Teacher Education, in press) and “Culturally responsive classroom management: Awareness into action,” also with Tomlinson-Clarke and Curran (Theory Into Practice, special theme issue on Managing Classrooms in a Diverse Society. Guest Editor, Carol Weinstein). Dr. Weinstein was one of the leaders in the redesign of Rutgers’ teacher education programs as well as a leader in Rutgers’ efforts to establish a professional development school with the New Brunswick school district. She currently works with teachers at the Rutgers Professional Development Schools on conflict resolution and peacemaking and is a trainer for Second Step, a violence prevention program.