Understanding culturally responsive practices in teacher preparation: an avenue to address disproportionality in special education

With the rapid increase of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds bringing a shift in the landscape in today’s schools, equity discourses continue to arise. For example, more than four decades of data have pointed towards the disproportionality (i.e. over- or -under-representation) of students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds in special education in the United States, Europe, and beyond. As a continuous problem, there have not been enough studies exploring the state of general education teacher preparation programs and pre-service teachers’ use of culturally responsive practices (CRP) within referral models for special education. Knowing that teacher preparation is a key formation period for practicing teachers’ beliefs and knowledge the current study examined pre-service teachers’ knowledge and skills of culturally responsive practices within pre-referral models in order to address equity issues in special education (e.g. service delivery). Results from a fully integrated mixed methods study showed to be contradictory as the rating of pre-service teachers’ perceived knowledge and skills of CRP and pre-referral models to be high but their work indicated otherwise. Implications for teacher preparation programs include more in-depth learning experiences on CRP, disabilities, and engaging in equity discourses as part of pre-service teachers’ preparation.