Activity 6-A

Professional Development Activity 6-A
Submitted by Geneva Gay, University of Washington
(Comment option available at the bottom of the page.)

This activity relates to Standard 6.6.

Teacher educators, classroom teachers, school principals, curriculum developers, guidance counselors, and others who must be actively involved in implementing education for and about diversity do not automatically have the knowledge and skills needed. These competencies have to be developed in a variety of preservice and ongoing staff development activities. The nature of the standards (and related benchmarks) determine the major substantive parameters of these learning experiences, not how they are taught. All staff members may participate in professional development on the same standards, but how they engage with them should vary according to who they are and their roles and functions in the educational enterprise. Therefore, specific, competency-centered professional development on diversity is more effective than whole-staff and generalized learning experiences.

The sample professional development activity described next focuses on Standard 6.6 which states “successful supervision helps teachers and other educators develop a deep knowledge and critical consciousness of how cultural diversity influences the educational opportunities, programs, practices, and outcomes for students from different ethnic groups, and develop skills for making these processes more multicultural.” It deals specifically with analyzing the current status of ethnic and cultural diversity in local or particular educational programs and practices, and how it can be improved.

Four major assumptions underlie this activity: (1) current diversity efforts in education are inadequate, (2) recognition and understanding of inadequacies are prerequisites to high quality action reform, (3) personal self-awareness, institutional analyses, and programmatic assessments are essential components of developing critical awareness for implementing diversity, and (4) educational change strategies must be informed by knowledge about diversity that is different from what has been traditionally used. Furthermore, “critical cultural consciousness” is not merely criticism. Rather, it focuses on analyzing and critiquing how diversity is typically dealt with in education, from the perspectives of individual and institutional ideologies, policies, programs, and practices, and then envisioning new possibilities for change that are more constructive and productive (Gay & Kirkland, 2003).

This professional development activity has four phases that will move participants through processes of knowing, thinking, feeling, doing, and reflecting. Its ultimate goal is to empower both the individual members and the collective members of a school’s professional staff to personify and promote cultural diversity in everything they do, all of the time.

In the first phase, the participants will examine their personal beliefs and ideologies about ethnic and cultural diversity in general, and its role in the educational process specifically. Different prompts should be used to elicit these ideas, such as doing free-writes on the role of diversity in schools and society; responding to a real or contrived scenario declaring the merits of color-blindness and racelessness in educating diverse students; and creating acrostics and acronyms that capture the ideological positions of the participants on ethnic and cultural diversity. After these documents are completed individually, they should be shared in groups and compared for similarities and differences. Then, regroup the participants according to similar beliefs and engage in conversations about the reasoning behind their ideologies and creations. This phase of the activity can be concluded by having the participants read a critique of “color-blindness” written by a scholar, such as The Colorblind Perspective in School: Causes and Consequences by Janet Schofield (2001). Another quick reference that can help the participants to further crystallize their thinking about the place of diversity in education is Acceptance and Caring are at the Heart of Engaging Classroom Diversity by Lindy Twiss (1997).

In the second phase of this activity, the participants will collect data on how diversity is currently addressed in their respective areas of the educational enterprise. For example, school administrators might compile information on the demographic distribution of the school’s student population by ethnic groups across grade levels, enrollment in various curricular options (i. e., advanced placement subjects, gifted and talented, special education, English language learning), frequency and types of disciplinary referrals, extracurricular activities, and participation in student leadership functions (such as student government and honor society). Counselors might collect statistics on the kinds of self-initiated contacts made to their offices for services and supports by members of different ethnic groups, and how these vary by age and gender within and across ethnic groups, and identifying the most and least problematic school adjustment issues encountered by members of different ethnic groups.

Classroom teachers might collect similar data about student participation in classroom interactions, when and what kinds of learning experiences about diversity they typically provide, how students from different ethnic groups react to these experiences, and how ethnic and cultural diversity is represented in textbooks and other instructional materials. The analyses of instructional materials should be multiethnic, thorough and comprehensive, including quantitative and qualitative data about the full range of information presented in varied formats (such as the narrative text, visual illustrations, learning activities and projects, highlights and special features, questions and prompts, additional resources, background information on authors, events, etc.). Educators across school functions (i. e., teachers, instructional aides, clerical and janitorial staff, counselors, administrators, etc.) can work together to describe and document their perceptions of and interactions with students from different ethnic groups, the conditions under which these occur, and how diversity is conveyed through schoolwide activities such as hall and classroom decorations, relationships among students from different ethnic groups, award presentations, assembly programs, and interactions with different community-based, ethnically different groups, individuals, and events. Once these data are collected and summarized they could then be analyzed for patterns or trends within and across different areas (teaching, counseling, extracurricular activities, administration, etc.) of school functioning.

The third phase of this professional development activity focuses on actions for change. The results from the comparison of the participation trends of ethnically diverse students and issues in school programs and practices can be used to identify areas that need to be changed to achieve a more comprehensive and inclusive representation of diversity across school life. The school staff members then work collectively to prioritize these needs, decide on broad timelines for change, and determine the resources required to accomplish the reform goals. Next, members of school staff work in job-alike groups to determine area-specific actions needed to achieve the school-based diversity improvement plan. For example, teachers may be grouped according to subjects, grades, subjects within grades, or topics across subjects and grades. All members of the job-alike teams should agree to participate in the implementation of the action plans and have specific tasks to perform. It also would be helpful if opportunities and invitations are provided for members of the school staff to make individual contributions to the change process. For instance, some teachers might work on changing how they interact with diverse students in the classroom, some may focus on establishing better informal relationships with students outside the classroom, and still others could choose to modify content about diversity in specified units of instruction. Interested members from different segments of the schoolwide staff may decide to redesign how diversity is portrayed in the visual representations and symbolic images of the school to make them more inclusive and explicit about the institutional acceptance and commitment to ethnic and cultural diversity.

In the fourth phase, conclude the professional development activity with a communal sharing of action plans from the small groups. Plan future sessions to coordinate, monitor, and assess the progress of the reform efforts and reflect on the current learning experiences. These reflections should include both personal and professional elements, such as what the individuals learned about their personal needs and capabilities, their individual areas of work and the school as a whole as related to diversity, and how they feel about their ability to make worthy contributions to creating more desirable learning spaces and opportunities for diversity to flourish among themselves, their students, and their institution. Have the participants revisit their initial ideas about the viability of a “color blind” approach to diversity in view of the revelations and learning that occurred throughout this professional growth experience.

Assessment Criteria

As is the case with teaching and learning experiences with students, professional development activities for the school staff should be assessed to determine the progress the participants made toward achieving the goals, and how well the design of the learning activities matched the components of high quality education for and about diversity as described in multicultural scholarship. Some criteria that can be used to make these assessments about the activity described above are:

Participants are open to critically analyzing their beliefs about and behaviors toward diversity, and reexamining them in view of countervailing evidence.

School staff members accept individual and collective ownership of and responsibility for making personal and institutional changes to improve the quality of education for diversity.

Data collected about diversity in schools (or the lack thereof) are comprehensive and have substantive depth in that they include all aspects of the school and different types of participation and performance specific to various ethnic groups.

Data about cultural diversity in the local school are disaggregated by variables within ethnic groups, such as age, gender, grade, and subject, as well as by ethnic groups. Plans for reform also reflect this variability. The professional fund of knowledge on education for and about diversity is evoked in making sense of particular or localized school achievements, challenges, needs, and plans for reform, as well as the progress made in achieving new goals.

Participants become more conscious about the presence and influence of cultural diversity in schooling and deliberate about making it more constructive, visible, inclusive, habitual, and facilitative in all aspects of school life. Increased knowledge and consciousness about ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity are reflected in the behaviors of school staff members as they fulfill their respective job responsibilities; there are high levels of congruency between their diversity reform plans and their actual behaviors.

References

Gay, G., & Kirkland, K. (2003). Developing cultural critical consciousness and self-reflection in preservice teacher education. Theory Into Practice, 42(3), 181-187.

Schofield, J. W. (2001). The colorblind perspective in school: Causes and consequences. In J. A. Banks & C. A. M. Banks (Eds.), Multicultural education: Issues & perspectives (4 th ed., pp. 247-267). New York: Wiley.

Twiss, L. L. (1997). Acceptance and caring are at the heart of engaging classroom diversity. The Reading Teacher, 50, 602-604.

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Please include your name, organization and the number and letter of the professional development activity with your comments.
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Professional Development Activity 6-A Submitted by Geneva Gay, University of Washington (Comment option available at the bottom of the page.) This activity relates to Standard 6.6. Teacher educators, classroom teachers, school principals, curriculum developers, guidance counselors, and others who must be actively involved in implementing education for and about diversity do not automatically have the knowledge and skills needed. These competencies have to be developed in a variety of preservice and ongoing staff development activities. The nature of the standards (and related benchmarks) determine the major substantive parameters of these learning experiences, not how they are taught. All staff members may participate in professional development on the same standards, but how they engage with them should vary according to who they are and their roles and functions in the educational enterprise. Therefore, specific, competency-centered professional development on diversity is more effective than whole-staff and generalized learning experiences. The sample professional development activity described next focuses on Standard 6.6 which states “successful supervision helps teachers and other educators develop a deep knowledge and critical consciousness of how cultural diversity influences the educational opportunities, programs, practices, and outcomes for students from different ethnic groups, and develop skills for making these processes more multicultural.” It deals specifically with analyzing the current status of ethnic and cultural diversity in local or particular educational programs and practices, and how it can be improved. Four major assumptions underlie this activity: (1) current diversity efforts in education are inadequate, (2) recognition and understanding of inadequacies are prerequisites to high quality action reform, (3) personal self-awareness, institutional analyses, and programmatic assessments are essential components of developing critical awareness for implementing diversity, and (4) educational change strategies must be informed by knowledge about diversity that is different from what has been traditionally used. Furthermore, “critical cultural consciousness” is not merely criticism. Rather, it focuses on analyzing and critiquing how diversity is typically dealt with in education, from the perspectives of individual and institutional ideologies, policies, programs, and practices, and then envisioning new possibilities for change that are more constructive and productive (Gay & Kirkland, 2003). This professional development activity has four phases that will move participants through processes of knowing, thinking, feeling, doing, and reflecting. Its ultimate goal is to empower both the individual members and the collective members of a school’s professional staff to personify and promote cultural diversity in everything they do, all of the time. In the first phase, the participants will examine their personal beliefs and ideologies about ethnic and cultural diversity in general, and its role in the educational process specifically. Different prompts should be used to elicit these ideas, such as doing free-writes on the role of diversity in schools and society; responding to a real or contrived scenario declaring the merits of color-blindness and racelessness in educating diverse students; and creating acrostics and acronyms that capture the ideological positions of the participants on ethnic and cultural diversity. After these documents are completed individually, they should be shared in groups and compared for similarities and differences. Then, regroup the participants according to similar beliefs and engage in conversations about the reasoning behind their ideologies and creations. This phase of the activity can be concluded by having the participants read a critique of “color-blindness” written by a scholar, such as The Colorblind Perspective in School: Causes and Consequences by Janet Schofield (2001). Another quick reference that can help the participants to further crystallize their thinking about the place of diversity in education is Acceptance and Caring are at the Heart of Engaging Classroom Diversity by Lindy Twiss (1997). In the second phase of this activity, the participants will collect data on how diversity is currently addressed in their respective areas of the educational enterprise. For example, school administrators might compile information on the demographic distribution of the school’s student population by ethnic groups across grade levels, enrollment in various curricular options (i. e., advanced placement subjects, gifted and talented, special education, English language learning), frequency and types of disciplinary referrals, extracurricular activities, and participation in student leadership functions (such as student government and honor society). Counselors might collect statistics on the kinds of self-initiated contacts made to their offices for services and supports by members of different ethnic groups, and how these vary by age and gender within and across ethnic groups, and identifying the most and least problematic school adjustment issues encountered by members of different ethnic groups. Classroom teachers might collect similar data about student participation in classroom interactions, when and what kinds of learning experiences about diversity they typically provide, how students from different ethnic groups react to these experiences, and how ethnic and cultural diversity is represented in textbooks and other instructional materials. The analyses of instructional materials should be multiethnic, thorough and comprehensive, including quantitative and qualitative data about the full range of information presented in varied formats (such as the narrative text, visual illustrations, learning activities and projects, highlights and special features, questions and prompts, additional resources, background information on authors, events, etc.). Educators across school functions (i. e., teachers, instructional aides, clerical and janitorial staff, counselors, administrators, etc.) can work together to describe and document their perceptions of and interactions with students from different ethnic groups, the conditions under which these occur, and how diversity is conveyed through schoolwide activities such as hall and classroom decorations, relationships among students from different ethnic groups, award presentations, assembly programs, and interactions with different community-based, ethnically different groups, individuals, and events. Once these data are collected and summarized they could then be analyzed for patterns or trends within and across different areas (teaching, counseling, extracurricular activities, administration, etc.) of school functioning. The third phase of this professional development activity focuses on actions for change. The results from the comparison of the participation trends of ethnically diverse students and issues in school programs and practices can be used to identify areas that need to be changed to achieve a more comprehensive and inclusive representation of diversity across school life. The school staff members then work collectively to prioritize these needs, decide on broad timelines for change, and determine the resources required to accomplish the reform goals. Next, members of school staff work in job-alike groups to determine area-specific actions needed to achieve the school-based diversity improvement plan. For example, teachers may be grouped according to subjects, grades, subjects within grades, or topics across subjects and grades. All members of the job-alike teams should agree to participate in the implementation of the action plans and have specific tasks to perform. It also would be helpful if opportunities and invitations are provided for members of the school staff to make individual contributions to the change process. For instance, some teachers might work on changing how they interact with diverse students in the classroom, some may focus on establishing better informal relationships with students outside the classroom, and still others could choose to modify content about diversity in specified units of instruction. Interested members from different segments of the schoolwide staff may decide to redesign how diversity is portrayed in the visual representations and symbolic images of the school to make them more inclusive and explicit about the institutional acceptance and commitment to ethnic and cultural diversity. In the fourth phase, conclude the professional development activity with a communal sharing of action plans from the small groups. Plan future sessions to coordinate, monitor, and assess the progress of the reform efforts and reflect on the current learning experiences. These reflections should include both personal and professional elements, such as what the individuals learned about their personal needs and capabilities, their individual areas of work and the school as a whole as related to diversity, and how they feel about their ability to make worthy contributions to creating more desirable learning spaces and opportunities for diversity to flourish among themselves, their students, and their institution. Have the participants revisit their initial ideas about the viability of a “color blind” approach to diversity in view of the revelations and learning that occurred throughout this professional growth experience. Assessment Criteria As is the case with teaching and learning experiences with students, professional development activities for the school staff should be assessed to determine the progress the participants made toward achieving the goals, and how well the design of the learning activities matched the components of high quality education for and about diversity as described in multicultural scholarship. Some criteria that can be used to make these assessments about the activity described above are: Participants are open to critically analyzing their beliefs about and behaviors toward diversity, and reexamining them in view of countervailing evidence. School staff members accept individual and collective ownership of and responsibility for making personal and institutional changes to improve the quality of education for diversity. Data collected about diversity in schools (or the lack thereof) are comprehensive and have substantive depth in that they include all aspects of the school and different types of participation and performance specific to various ethnic groups. Data about cultural diversity in the local school are disaggregated by variables within ethnic groups, such as age, gender, grade, and subject, as well as by ethnic groups. Plans for reform also reflect this variability. The professional fund of knowledge on education for and about diversity is evoked in making sense of particular or localized school achievements, challenges, needs, and plans for reform, as well as the progress made in achieving new goals. Participants become more conscious about the presence and influence of cultural diversity in schooling and deliberate about making it more constructive, visible, inclusive, habitual, and facilitative in all aspects of school life. Increased knowledge and consciousness about ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity are reflected in the behaviors of school staff members as they fulfill their respective job responsibilities; there are high levels of congruency between their diversity reform plans and their actual behaviors. References Gay, G., & Kirkland, K. (2003). Developing cultural critical consciousness and self-reflection in preservice teacher education. Theory Into Practice, 42(3), 181-187. Schofield, J. W. (2001). The colorblind perspective in school: Causes and consequences. In J. A. Banks & C. A. M. Banks (Eds.), Multicultural education: Issues & perspectives (4 th ed., pp. 247-267). New York: Wiley. Twiss, L. L. (1997). Acceptance and caring are at the heart of engaging classroom diversity. The Reading Teacher, 50, 602-604. Back to Standard Propose New Activity Comments Please include your name, organization and the number and letter of the professional development activity with your comments. Comments will be Posted On the Next Business Day..
	The Standards for Instructional Supervision