Keywords

equity, diversity, equitable teaching, content connections, language use, OER, EdTechBooks, CASI

Description

The cultural aspects of teacher-child interactions are emerging as key factors in K-6 learning, especially as the diversity of US classroom increases year to year. While there is growing evidence that culturally-connected classroom interactions can enrich development and improve classroom experience, finding accessible ways to teach, measure and improve those cultural aspects of teaching has been challenging, especially because of cost and access barriers.

The purpose of this project was to turn an existing cultural teaching observation protocol (the Classroom Assessment of Sociocultural Interactions, or CASI) into an instructional experience that would be accessible to all teachers. A team of graduate and undergraduate students designed and developed the first third of an open educational resource, hosted on EdTechBooks, that helps teachers learn and practice 2 of the 9 dimensions of equitable teaching. The development team then partnered with local K-6 teachers to evaluate and improve the resource, laying the groundwork for future development of this valuable book.

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