Social-Emotional Learning

Abstract

One of the critical issues in K-12 education today is addressing the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse students. Several studies have found disproportionate achievement outcomes for K-12 students of diverse socio-cultural and multicultural backgrounds as compared to White students. Teacher preparation programs are integral in developing the extent to which preservice teachers (PSTs) feel ready to effectively and equitably meet the needs of all students, particularly in terms of culturally responsive pedagogy and socio-emotional learning. This study was conducted in a large research university in the southern part of Texas and explores PSTs perceptions (n=129) regarding opportunity and confidence in social-emotional learning and culturally responsive teaching. The results show strong positive correlations between culturally responsive teaching opportunity and culturally responsive teaching confidence as well as strong relationships between social emotional learning opportunity and social emotional learning confidence. The ANOVA results indicate increased confidence in pre-service teachers’ perceptions on culturally responsive teaching based on grade classification. Implications for educator preparation programs are discussed. THE TEXAS FORUM OF TEACHER EDUCATION 92 McIntush, Zhou, Askari, Widdison, Keese, Burgess, Scaramuzzo, Norton, & Waxman © 2019 Texas Association of Teacher Educators Volume 9, pp.91-102 ISSN: 2166-0190 online