Using Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies

Using Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies to Impact Teachers’ Perception of Classroom Engagement in a Culturally Diverse Title I Elementary School: An Action Research Study

by

Wandy W. Taylor 

Dissertation Abstract

Although America’s schools have continued to become increasingly more culturally and ethnically diverse, the National Center for Education Statistics reported in 2018 that approximately 82% of the teachers in public schools were White. This has resulted in a student-teacher “culture gap” in many schools across our nation. While schools cannot control a student’s socioeconomic status or cultural background, they can control what happens inside the classroom. This action study was undertaken to determine if teachers in a high-poverty, high-diverse Title I elementary school in the southeastern region of the U.S. can improve their perceived ability to close the culture gap between them and their students through multicultural education.

The results of this study indicated that the teachers perceived an increase in their ability to engage the culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse students in classroom instruction through the use of culturally responsive teaching strategies.