Interrogating Cultural Diversity: Inquiry and Action

Abstract

There are no monolithic solutions to the complex and often unique problems of understanding and responding to the increasing cultural diversity in schools and classrooms in the United States. Preservice and in service teacher education programs need processes that prompt teachers and teacher educators to raise questions about issues of race, class, and ethnicity and to develop courses of action that are valid for particular communities. Teacher research has been proposed as one powerful process toward this end. Drawing on examples from preservice and in service teacher education projects in urban Philadelphia, we suggest that teachers can use research in work with other teachers and teacher educators to examine what they think they already know about race, class, and ethnicity, what they see when they observe their own students as learners, and what they choose to do about the disparities that often exist in their classrooms, schools, and communities.