It's Something You Have to Work for: Preservice Teacher Enactment of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy

The extensive and varied benefits of culturally sustaining pedagogies (CSP)* have been supported by numerous empirical studies (Aronson & Laughter, 2016); further, this approach is undergirded by historic models of education (Muhammad, 2020) and answers ethical questions about how students should be educated (Gay, 2002). However, for this potential to be realized, preservice teachers (PSTs) need to understand culturally sustaining pedagogies while bridging theory to practice by instantiating CSP through their daily practice. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to (1) explore the factors that preservice teachers felt contributed to their understanding and development of CSP; (2) examine how preservice teachers enact CSP through lesson planning; and (3) inquire into how preservice teachers describe the relationship between CSP and lesson planning. This study was conducted at a public, urban, minority-serving university; 22 preservice teachers in their third year of an undergraduate elementary teacher preparation program were the participants. The data sources included PSTs’ lesson plans and individual interviews. Preservice teachers described a variety of factors that contributed to their understanding and development of CSP; the way they leveraged and described those factors demonstrated six unique patterns. Three types of experiences were frequently discussed as contributing factors: classroom placements, teacher education, and PSTs’ schooling experiences. The complexity of planning for shared elements of identity versus a variety of identities emerged as a question and challenge for PSTs; this issue was particularly salient when PSTs considered planning for a component of identity that was not their own. This study examined artifacts of practice (lesson plans) to see not only if key elements of CSP were present but how they emerged in teacher practice; specific patterns were found for each element. There is a significant gap between the ample evidence of CSP enactment in PSTs’ lesson plans and the ways they self-assess or describe their enactment using limited evidence that focused primarily on identity. Preservice teachers expressed a strong sense of alignment and commitment to CSP and self-evaluated their lesson plans in ways that were generally positive but significantly underrepresented the complexity and depth of the ways they were enacting CSP. *Note: As described in the literature review, for this work, CSP is used as a term that encompasses multiple asset pedagogies such as culturally relevant education, culturally responsive teaching, culturally and historically responsive education, and others.