Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Dissertation

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Schoorman, Dilys

Abstract

This hermeneutic phenomenological study emerged from concerns about the ways teachers’ pedagogical practices are affected by growing diversity in their classrooms and continuous education reform. Drawing on the perspectives of critical pedagogy and postcolonial literary theory, this study also explored the tension that exists between what students ought to learn in schools and what they actually learn. Data was gathered through two interviews and a classroom observation with each of eight high school language arts teachers in South Florida to gain an understanding of how they use their pedagogical practices to navigate changes that occur in the practice field and create spaces to utilize culturally responsive pedagogy in their implementation of the current secondary school English/Language Arts curriculum. Teachers’ reflections on their experiences, descriptions of the climate of their practice and how teachers create spaces for culturally responsive pedagogy were analyzed to consider how their pedagogical practices conform to or challenge the structural and normative assumptions of the practice field. Findings revealed that despite the constraints imposed on their pedagogy by education reform, including standardization of their practice, all teachers used culturally responsive pedagogy in their classrooms to achieve state mandated goals, albeit at a foundational level. While teachers unencumbered by standardized testing expressed higher levels of freedom to make pedagogical choices in their classrooms, all participants suggested that prescribed curriculum and resources could do more to represent students’ needs and growing diversity in schools rather than standardized assessments. Furthermore in their implementations of culturally responsive pedagogy, teachers continue to use students’ voices to represent standardized curriculum and universal literary themes rather than establishing them as curriculum in their own right. As such, this study’s findings extend discussions by educational and postcolonial literary theorists regarding whose knowledge has legitimacy as a part of curriculum especially in a practice field that emphasizes student performance at state mandated levels above all else.

Extent

183 p.

Comments

Includes bibliography.|Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Includes bibliography.

Identifier

FA00013084

Format

pdf

Download

Share

COinS