About this poster

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Panel information
Panel 3. Schooling and Education

Abstract

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Developmental scholars are increasingly recognizing the importance of assessing anti-racist practices in school settings because such practices can disrupt the negative effects of systemic racism on students' academic and psychological adjustment (Saleem & Byrd, 2021); however, methodological advances are needed to meet these demands. Current normative and dominant culture approaches to teaching have been long documented as subtractive (Valenzuela, 1999) and harmful to the development and well-being of students of color (Kohli & Nevárez, 2017). Importantly, culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) reimagines education in a pluralistic society by centering the language, cultural practices, knowledge, and ways of being for all communities, especially those who have been historically marginalized, and thus can actively disrupt potentially harmful classroom environments (Paris & Alim, 2017). Developmental scientists committed to better understanding CSP that advances anti-racism need measurement tools that help us document, examine, and analyze these practices on a larger scale in order to develop interventions that positively impact students of color and their teachers. Current observational methods (e.g., CRIOP; Powell et al., 2017) provide an avenue for documenting CSP approaches that do not rely on teacher reports; however, these measures do not contain items on instructional content or practices that explicitly focus on discussing race and ethnicity in this classroom. Therefore, the current study adapted an observational measurement tool to incorporate items explicit to race and ethnicity and tested the psychometric properties of this instrument.

Data consisted of 849 observations nested within 55 classrooms across 14 teachers (13 White Teachers, 1 Teacher of Color; 64% Male, 36% Female; teaching experience range 0-24 years, M=9) in two participating high schools. First, 23 observers took field notes (across 2022-2023 school year) for an entire class period (~60 minutes) utilizing the CSP observational tool, which was designed to capture 11 indicators of CSP across four categories (Table 1). Next, 23 trained coders (78% also observers) reviewed individual fieldnotes and determined whether each instance described in the fieldnotes could be categorized under any of the observational tool indicators. Each classroom observation was then coded based on the frequency with which any particular category occurred (0=Not observed, 1=Observed Once, and 2=Observed Multiple Times). Observations were independently coded by two coders, and coders met to resolve any discrepancies. Weekly coding meetings provided opportunities to further refine the coding process and resolve discrepancies that coders could not address on their own. Given the nested nature of the data, intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) for each indicator were calculated across teachers and across observers. Given evidence for nested data at the observer level, multi-level EFA was used to examine the factor structure of this new CSP observational tool (Level 2: observers; Level 1: observations).

A multi-level EFA model with oblique goemin rotation was fit to the data (Table 2), using multiple criteria to select the final model (McMahod & Naragon-Gainey, 2019). Results suggested evidence for one factor at the between-observer level and two factors (i.e., 4-item ethnoracial critical reflection subscale; 3-item supportive classroom relationships subscale) at the within-observer level (Table 1). Three items were removed from the final model (Table 2). Despite its infrequent occurrence, Instruction Indicator 4 was retained as a single-item factor (i.e., critical action), due to its theoretical importance within the CSP literature (Paris & Alim, 2017). Additionally, as Interpersonal Indicator 4 loaded comparably onto both factors, it was not included in either factor and instead was retained as a single-item factor (i.e., teacher & student ethnoracial vulnerability) because it captures a theoretically significant aspect of CSP. Discussion will center on the process and implications of revising CSP observational tools to better assess anti-racist classroom practices.

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