Enhancing Equitable and Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices Through Simulated Teaching Experiences

This paper addresses educators’ use of a simulated teaching environment and its relationship to changes in indices associated with equitable and culturally responsive teaching practices. Included in the study are data from 48 educators, who spent a minimum of 4 hours and 30 minutes completing 17 sessions in the provided modules, followed by targeted feedback on each session in a simulated teaching environment. Results showed significant and educationally meaningful positive changes in measured indices related to equitable and culturally responsive teaching practices following experiences in the simSchool online simulated teaching environment. Overall findings included significant (p < .05) gains in self-reported culturally responsive and equitable teaching practices following completion of simulated teaching modules. With respect to gender, female teachers produced gains across seven of the nine measurement indices while males rated themselves lower on equitable practices at the time of the pretest but increased significantly in three key areas. The number of years of teaching experience impacted changes as well. Teachers with 11 years or more of teaching experience produced significant (p <.05) gains in eight of the nine areas measured, while teachers with 10 or fewer years of teaching experience reported significant (p <.05) gains in three of the nine measures.