2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In efforts to prepare our pre-service teachers to be culturally responsive educators, the Teacher Preparation Program (TPP) at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has developed a foundational course that is immersed in community engagement. Partnering with local community-based organizations (CBO) has afforded opportunities for our pre-service teachers to become familiar with the assets of our urban gateway city and its population that includes many immigrants and refugees. The demographics and lived experiences of the students in the classrooms that the pre-service teachers will have as a part of during their student teaching practicum are often different from theirs. Thus, culturally responsive teaching (CRT) approaches have been strategically integrated into the entire TPP curriculum. This initial course focuses on developing cultural humility, asset-based approaches to education, and engaging family and community.

Our pre-service teachers spend significant time at a CBO partner site on a weekly basis, usually an afterschool and/or Saturday program, to develop relationships with K-12 students, families, and the CBO to enable reciprocal learning of each other’s assets and lived experiences. Our non-profit CBO partner sites serve many low-income, immigrant, and refugee students (who attend the public school district) and their families. Alongside the community engagement experiences, the pre-service teachers meet on-campus for class discussions and complete assignments that include guided reflections. Course learning objectives include examining identity and intersectionality, implicit associations, saviorism, community cultural wealth, and funds of knowledge. Gaining competencies in CRT and Family Engagement are also objectives of the course.

Our study investigates if and how community-based teaching experiences combined with training in CRT prepares our pre-service teachers to teach in urban high-need school districts. Pre/post-course surveys are administered using a Likert scale to measure their: 1) experience working with diverse populations (race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, languages, cultures, etc.), 2) comfort in teaching in urban environments with a wide range of diversity, 3) level of understanding/awareness of the lived experiences of students and their families in urban settings, and 4) ability to implement culturally responsive teaching strategies. Open-ended prompts follow each survey statement to explain their response. This same survey is administered at other points in time along the TPP curriculum.

Preliminary results from the first offering of the foundational course indicate that pre-service teachers self-report that they already have awareness of and have had experience working with diverse populations. However, the open-ended responses reveal a recognition in needing to learn more about the local community and that they have yet to learn specific culturally responsive teaching strategies (which come later in the TPP curriculum). Initial analysis by the authors question whether there is a tendency for responding with perceived social desirability rather than real ability and/or that the survey statements are too general and open to different interpretations. Contextualizing the survey statements to our city, local K-12 public schools, students, and city populations might improve the survey. In addition, focus groups and specific reflection assignments could allow greater insight into the pre-service teacher’s experiences and dispositions as supportive qualitative data. Results from this study will ultimately help inform improvements to the coursework and experiences of the Teacher Prep Program.