Diversity-Rich Content of Professional Development

2. Professional development activities help teachers investigate and understand how students' race, ethnicity, social class and language might be related to their learning and behavior.

3. Teachers are helped to understand how the overgeneralization of characteristics of students' cultures can result in stereotyping and other unproductive teaching behaviors.

4. Professional development activities help members of the school staff examine how their own beliefs and dispositions might affect their relationships with diverse students.

5. Teachers are helped to understand how they react to students' dress, accents, nonverbal communication, dialects and discussion modes and how their reactions affect their interactions with students.

6. Professional development activities help teachers to develop the knowledge and skills to effectively teach students from different racial and ethnic groups.

The content of professional development should be focused on how teachers can best teach the subjects student are expected to learn. But, teaching students of diverse races and ethnicities requires that teachers have skills and knowledge that are particularly relevant to their students’ racial, ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity. Several aspects of what might be called diversity-related content of professional development that experts have identified as important are identified in the survey items above.

Sometimes, diversity-related professional development assumes that a "multicultural" focus on teacher awareness and dispositions is adequate to improve instruction and student learning. It is not. Teachers need to master pedagogical skills, including those that are content specific, if they are to enhance the learning of racially and ethnically diverse students.

Examine these resources first:
Alfredo Artiles argues that everything we do is influenced by culture; teachers need to inquire into their own culture, the culture of their school, as well as the cultures of their students.

Geneva Gay defines "culture" and the chief goals of culturally relevant pedagogy.

Jacqueline Jordan Irvine enumerates some of the underlying characteristics of culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy.

Luis Moll defines his concept of "funds of knowledge" and suggests how teacher study groups can guide curriculum development in diverse settings.

Developing Schoolwide Commitments to Ensuring that all Students Succeed
It should be emphasized that teachers and administrators throughout the school need diversity-related knowledge and skills if a school-wide culture of shared responsibility for the social and cognitive development of all students is to be achieved.

Explore a range of actions that school leaders - be they administrators or teachers - can take to develop shared responsibility for student learning.

Guarding Against Cultural Stereotyping
Kris Gutierrez notes that race and ethnicity are not the same as culture--culture is dynamic and one should look for both similarities and variance in the culture of students.

Jacqueline Jordan Irvine notes that it is important to guard against overgeneralizing about students' cultural differences.

Diversity-Sensitive Standards for Effective Pedagogy
The Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence has developed five oft-cited principles of effective pedagogy that are particularly relevant to meeting the needs of racially and ethnically diverse students. Learn about these principles.