Evaluation of the Center for Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

Project Title: CRIOP: A Professional Development Framework for Closing the Gap Topic: Effective Teachers and Effective Teaching; Goal: Development and Innovation The purpose of this project is to develop and document the feasibility and promise of a professional development framework for culturally responsive literacy instruction. The project, which includes a development phase and a pilot study phase, will employ design-based research methods in an iterative process of development, data collection, and refinement to establish a fully-developed professional development intervention based on the Culturally Responsive Instruction Observation Protocol (CRIOP). The pilot study will provide insight into the promise of the CRIOP framework for improving teachers’ knowledge, efficacy, and practices with culturally responsive literacy instruction. It will also address the potential impact of the intervention on students’ engagement and literacy performance. Six middle schools in the second-largest district in Kentucky will participate in either the development or pilot study phase. Average enrollment in the participating schools is 660, including approximately 40% of students who are ethnically diverse and 40% of students who qualify for free or reduced lunch. After initial development of the professional development modules and materials, the professional development will be implemented in with 16 English/Language Arts (E/LA) teachers in two middle schools. Sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade teachers will attend a five-day summer institute and will participate in monthly on-site coaching and 2 follow-up meetings. The content of the professional development will revolve around implementing culturally responsive practices in teaching literacy, specifically in the following six areas: classroom relationships, classroom discourse, curriculum, instruction/pedagogy, assessment, and family collaboration. An Efficacy for Teaching Literacy Survey (ETLS) and Culturally Responsive Teaching Survey (CRTS) will be used to measure changes in teachers’ knowledge and efficacy, and a teacher questionnaire will be used to assess teachers’ perceptions of the professional development model. The CRIOP instrument will be used to conduct classroom observations that will provide information about teachers’ implementation, highlighting strengths and weaknesses of the professional development model. Student questionnaires, classroom-based literacy measures, and a statewide standardized literacy test will serve as student measures. Feedback from these data sources will inform the refinement of the model and will yield preliminary findings related to feasibility of implementation and promise of the intervention for changing teacher efficacy and student outcomes. A pilot study using a pre- and post-test control group design will be conducted to ascertain the promise of the refined intervention for teachers and students. This study will use HLM and Exploratory Data Analysis of Variance to compare outcomes for teachers and students when teachers participate in the CRIOP professional development versus teachers and students who do not participate. Four middle schools in the district will be randomly assigned to treatment group; 30 teachers in two schools will participate in the intervention and 30 in two schools will serve as a comparison group. ETLS and CRTS will be used to assess the impact of coaching on teachers’ efficacy for literacy teaching and on teachers’ understandings of and efficacy for culturally responsive instruction. Classroom observations with the CRIOP will be used to assess the impact of coaching on teachers’ implementation of culturally responsive literacy instruction. Student questionnaires will be used to assess student engagement and student text retellings and written essays will be used to assess student performance (N=320). A state-administered standardized reading test will serve as a secondary student measure