Examining Principals' Perceptions of Their Support and Facilitation of Teachers' Implementation of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy to Help Black Male Students in English Language Arts.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The academic outcomes of Black male students, specifically as it relates to English Language Arts, have been a cause for concern for quite some time. Data consistently shows that Black male’ performance lags behind the performance of their White counterparts. Proponents of culturally relevant pedagogy, like Ladson-Billings, believed it is an effective practice to address the failings of an education system that historically has underserved culturally diverse students.This qualitative study explored the perceptions of New York City Department of Education principals relating to their facilitation and support of teacher implementation of culturally relevant pedagogy to help Black males in English Language Arts. This research focused on the school leaders’ facilitation of culturally relevant pedagogy as described by the culturally relevant pedagogy framework. It also examined the extent to which principals received professional development on culturally relevant pedagogy from their supervisors and how the principals engaged their teachers in professional development relative to culturally relevant pedagogy.This grounded theory study targeted New York City Department of Education high school principals employed within schools in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. Twelve randomly selected principals responded to 14 semi-structured interview questions. An interview protocol was used and all interviewees were advised that they could withdraw from the study at any time. The researcher followed all recommended Institutional Review Board protocols, which were used consistently with all the participants.The findings indicate that the principals did not have a definition of culturally relevant pedagogy that matches Ladson-Billings’s framework, and most of them did not foster a shared definition of culturally relevant pedagogy. In addition, all of the principals, except one, were not receiving any professional development focused on culturally relevant pedagogy. More than half of the participants had attempted to provide professional development on culturally relevant pedagogy to their teachers, but the district’s prioritized professional development focused on improving test results. Finally, all of the principals were not facilitating culturally relevant pedagogy in any way or in the manner described by the culturally relevant pedagogy framework.The researcher concludes the following: (a) the participants were not familiar enough with culturally relevant pedagogy to expertly facilitate it, (b) the district-level school leaders had not prioritized and mandated culturally relevant pedagogy, (c) the principals perceived that culturally relevant pedagogy would be beneficial to their Black male students, and (f) New York State English Language Arts data were limited.