Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The purpose of Preparing Preservice Teachers in a Diverse World was to summarise the
research carried out in the five year Beyond Awareness project. The aim of this project was to
teachers develop habits of mind (Lenski, Crawford, Cumpler &Stallworth, 2005a) that would
allow them to be more effective in todays diverse classrooms. Though a total of 28 preservice
teachers were included in the study from the beginning, only 6 were selected as key informants
and had their data, all qualitative in nature, analysed. Information was gathered through
example in local shops, on the bus, and around the school. Papers written by the participants on
cultural issues in the classroom and on the ethnographic approach were also analyzed.
Additionally, three formal interviews and five informal interviews were carried out with these 6
individuals.
The motivation behind this study was the existence of an increasingly White teacher
population while the student population was becoming increasingly diverse (Lenski et al.,
2005a). The authors felt that given these circumstances, teachers need to become more culturally
responsive if they are to meet the needs of the students that they teach. The authors developed
the Beyond Awareness project as the existing approaches used to promote cultural awareness in
trainee teachers had mixed results. The authors seem to have carried out significant background
research and their methodology appears sound as do their instruments. A pilot study was also
carried out so that appropriate adjustments could be made prior to data collection. I found this
article very thorough in its approach, from providing a detailed and well backed up account of
observations and research that lead to this particular report, through to a comprehensive
description of how the research was carried out and what was discovered. Many of the
2
Article Critique #1
references used were previously written journal articles on themes relating to ethnographic
lenski) confirms that the lead author, Susan Lenski, works at Portland University as a professor
in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Her work considers the different levels of
reading and her work is focused on training teens to be critical consumers of higher level
information. She has won numerous awards for her dedication to teaching and has published
over 60 articles and 20 books (para. 2,3). For this reason I would consider her an expert in her
field and a credible and qualified source of information. In addition, she had experts help her
with the research, one anthropologist and one on-site teacher to help train the preservice teachers
The researchers were hoping to find that by training preservice teachers to make
ethnographic observations they would develop the habits of mind (Lenski et. al., 2005a)
required to recognise their own culture and become responsive to the cultures brought into the
classroom by the students. As the data collected was purely qualitative there was no statistical
observations, written papers and interviews the reliability of the conclusions was improved.
The conclusion that was drawn from this research was that participant observation and
key elements to developing more reflective ways to address culture and cultural diversity in
teachers education (Lenski et. al., 2005a). As the participants were encouraged to think more
about culture, both their own and their students, they became better able to incorporate cultural
I found myself wondering what issued the pilot study found that needed tailoring? As the
background research was so thorough I would expect the issues to be small, nonetheless it would
be interesting to know what they were. I also found myself wondering how and why the six
teachers that were used were selected from the original 28. The sample size was small to begin
with so generalizability was always limited, but what criteria was used to rule out 22 or the
original sample? Finally, the Beyond awareness project was originally intended for those going
into teaching in a high-need schools (Lenski et. al., 2005b). I would be interested to know
something about the backgrounds of the preservice teachers themselves as well as the areas that
they were making their observations in as this article suggests the suburbs which may not allow
I found myself concerned that the lack of a control group hinders validity. It could be the
case that during the first years of teaching in a culturally diverse classroom, teachers instinctively
develop the ability to make ethnographic observations and put them into practice to suit the
needs of the students they teach and that in the long run this early introduction might not prove
necessary. Additionally, for this research to be replicable and therefore more reliable, more
detail on the instruments used to check for before and after differences in the preservice teacher
would need to be made available. Finally, ever the scientist, I would feel more comfortable if
there was some translation of qualitative information into quantitative information so that any
References
Lenski, S. D., Crawford, K., Crumplter, T., & Stallworth, C. (2005a). Beyond Awareness:
files.eric.ed.gov.opac.msmc.edu/fulltext/EJ795311.pdf
Lenski, S. D., Crawford, K., Crumpler, T., & Stallworth, C. (2005b). Preparing preservice
Portland State University (2015). Profile: Meet Professor Susan Lenski. Retrieved from
http://www.pdx.edu/profile/meet-professor-susan-lenski