| The purpose of the current study is to investigate teachers' dispositions for educating students from diverse backgrounds and to examine educators' understanding of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP). The current study compares secondary school teachers' dispositions for educating students from diverse backgrounds. The participants in the current study either worked at a secondary school with a majority White student population or non-White student population. Additionally, the current study compares teachers' dispositions for educating students from diverse backgrounds based on teachers' demographical information such as gender, age, years of teaching experience and ethnicity. The current study is a cross-sectional research design using the Diversity Disposition Index (DDI) survey to measure current dispositions for educating students from diverse backgrounds. An open-ended question was added to the DDI that asked participants to reveal their understanding of CRP. A total of 295 secondary school teachers responded to the survey. An independent samples t-test and a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare the impact the type of school where one teaches and the demographical data have on the conceptions of knowledge, self and others, and social relations, as measured by the DDI. A 95% confidence interval was used for both statistical tests. The statistical analyses revealed that there were no significant differences in the mean DDI scores measuring dispositions for teachers from secondary schools that have a majority White student population and teachers from secondary schools that have a majority non-White student population. Additionally, the study revealed that there were no significant differences in the mean DDI scores measuring dispositions based on gender, ethnicity, age, and years of teaching experience. The open-ended question revealed that roughly 70% of respondents had some understanding of culturally relevant pedagogy. |
