Teacher Candidates Using Annotated Technology Foster Cultural Responsiveness and Ethics

Abstract

Education preparation programs are guided by national and state standards in training teacher education candidates for a career in education. Though embedded in coursework and assessed through various assignments, there is limited assessment of whether teacher education candidates comprehend specific concepts within a standard. There are advances that allow observation and assessment of teacher candidates, which gives all parties involved in student teaching a method to gage the candidates’ ability to identify distinctive archetypes within a standard as it applies to the candidate’s culture and beliefs. Digital tools, such as video annotation software (VAS) programs, include settings that permit their users to provide feedback on a digital platform. The feedback can be used to measure candidates’ comprehension of their own culture and beliefs in relation to specific concepts within a standard to cultivate the development of cultural responsiveness and ethics. GoReact is a VAS program used at a top 20 Historically Black College University (HBCU) to assess teacher candidates’ knowledge of cultural responsiveness and ethics in student teaching. The information from the digital platform was quantified, showing emergent themes and findings that are relative to whether VAS programs are a useful tool for measuring cultural responsiveness education and ethics in teacher candidate training.