Supporting Middle Grades Teacher Candidates in Becoming Culturally Competent

Abstract

Shifting demographics among racial and ethnic groups within the United States are reflected in the diversity of the middle grade student population, as they are members of longstanding racial groups or members of biracial or multiracial groups that have emerged. These diversities are causes for celebrations, but at the same time offer challenges for preparing middle level teacher candidates to work with students who look different than they do and come from cultural backgrounds that may be unfamiliar to them. In this article, University of South Carolina's Nathan Cannes, explains that his middle level teacher candidates must enroll in and complete a course that provides an overview of national trends related to learning environments with an analysis of the relationship of early adolescent developmental characteristics to organization, curriculum, instruction, and teaching in the middle level school. Furthermore, candidates engage in examinations and analyses of behavior management issues, techniques, and special provisions related to social justice within academic and cultural contexts. To support the candidates' growth toward the integration of theory and practice, the course instruction and activities take place at a middle school that is in close proximity of the University campus. More importantly, a rich diversity of students from various racial groups, socio-economic status, neighborhoods, and cultural backgrounds attend there. Cannes describes how he revised this middle level behavior management class to include a service learning component--an instructional strategy that is based on a perspective that students learning by doing (Chenarani, 2017). To engage his students through the use of lived experience, he creates a sociogram--a graphic representation of relationships that exist among students--based on his students responses to questions about themselves. As a formative assessment, teacher candidates can use sociogram representations to form heterogenous and collaborative groups so that their students gain positive experiences in working with peers from diverse backgrounds.