Interactions and Gains in Cultural Responsiveness in Pre-Service Educators

Abstract

All teachers, special educators included, need to build competencies to honor and respond to the cultures of the students in their classrooms and school communities. This study of 64 pre-service teachers investigated interactions between their culturally responsive experiences specific to teaching children with disabilities and their self-efficacy for culturally responsive teaching of diverse children who qualify for special education. Participants self-rated their experiences and self-efficacy using the Culturally Responsive Special Education Experiences and Efficacy Scale which worked as a measure of self-efficacy. Variance in culturally responsive experiences explained nearly half of the variance in culturally responsive self-efficacy. Participants made very large effect size gains in both culturally responsive experiences and culturally responsive self-efficacy, though post-assessment self-efficacy remained merely moderate, indicating a next step for program improvement to increase culturally responsive experiences.