Working with Communities to Explore and Personalize Culturally Relevant Pedagogies: Push, Double Images, and Raced Talk

Source: Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 58, No. 2, 168-183 (2007)

Within this article I describe, with the help of my masters in education (MEd) students who are also my coresearchers, the results of a year-long, cooperative inquiry aimed at exploring and making concrete the ways in which cultural and political knowledge can be explored, understood, and personalized as prospective teachers begin to develop culturally relevant approaches.

This work is not intended to describe a model or define a single style, nor do we make any claims that what is described can be linked to improved achievement. What we do attempt to communicate is how a group of prospective teachers, as participants and students of a particular African American community context, begin to develop bicultural competency and personalize cultural and political knowledge in an effort to develop culturally relevant pedagogies.