Given the prominent role of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) in preparing pre-service teachers to be culturally relevant educators, we developed a series of online learning modules for GTAs in a College of Education to support their ICC...
Listed in Reports/White Papers
Version 2.0 - published on 13 Feb 2023
Licensed under CC0 - Creative Commons
This research was funded by the 2021 CILMAR Seed Grant. The link to the presentation can be found here.
In K-12 education, teachers have a responsibility to confront systemic oppression in their classrooms. Given the prominent role of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) in preparing pre-service teachers to be culturally relevant educators, we developed a series of online learning modules for GTAs in a College of Education to support their intercultural competency development. We developed the Introduction to Cultural Competency in Education online learning modules with two primary frameworks: (a) the Culture Cycle (Hamedani & Markus, 2019), which conceptualizes culture by ideas, institutions, interactions, and individuals; and (b) the Intercultural Development Continuum (Hammer, 2012), which supports individuals to reflect on their intercultural competencies and identify areas of growth, progressing from denial, polarization, minimization, acceptance, to adaptation. Throughout our online learning modules, GTAs engaged in asynchronous interactive sessions, closing each module with structured self-reflections that we later reviewed for individualized feedback. In this white paper, we present preliminary findings from a case study of the first module: Defining Culture. Namely, we found that engaging with the first module contributed to GTAs’ practices and motivations for becoming more interculturally competent and GTAs reported that the modules supported their understanding of and attitudes toward intercultural competence. Our series of online learning modules contribute to resources for developing GTAs’ intercultural competencies and efforts toward creating more culturally sustaining classroom environments with pre-service teachers.
If you are interested in applying for the CILMAR Seed Grant, information can be found here: https://purdue.edu/ippu/cilmar/research/seed-grants.html. Applicants should be employed and/or pursuing a course of study at Purdue University’s West Lafayette campus.
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Citation: Adeoye, T. F., Cabrera, V., Castellanos-Reyes, D., Lolkus, M. & Strait, M. (2022). Supporting Graduate Teaching Assistants’ Intercultural Competencies [White paper]. Intercultural Learning Hub (HubICL). https://hubicl.org/publications/167/1.