Chang, Wen-Chia

The Name Blinded for Review (TEES) Scale was developed to measure the complexity of teaching practice for equity by integrating Rasch measurement and Guttman facet theory. This paper extends the existing work to develop and validate an efficient, short-form TEES Scale that can be used for research and evaluation purposes. The Rasch rating scale model is used to analyze the responses of 354 teachers across the United States. Validity evidence, which addresses the data/theory alignment, item and person fit, rating scale functioning, dimensionality, generalizability, and relations to external variables, is examined to support the adequacy and appropriateness of the proposed score interpretations and uses. The short-form TEES Scale functions well to measure teaching practice for equity and provides evidence for research or evaluation studies on whether and to what extent teachers or candidates learn to enact equity-centered practice. Limitations and future directions of the scale are discussed.

In educational reform initiatives worldwide and in Singapore, educators are increasingly encouraged to take ownership of their work through involvement in practitioner inquiry and evaluation efforts to transform teaching and learning. Educators’ epistemological beliefs – their view of knowledge and knowing – play a critical role as they learn to become critical, reflective actors in the knowledge construction endeavour. This mixed-methods study investigates whether and how educators’ epistemological beliefs influence their understanding of programme evaluation as viewed through participants’ journey of learning to design a real-world evaluation study in the context of Masters-level coursework. Findings suggest that participants’ epistemological scale scores are associated with their learning outcomes as manifested in the quality of their evaluation plan. Specifically, participants with higher or lower scores show important differences in their view of evaluation and what a good evaluation requires, their relationship with knowledge about programme evaluation, the nature of challenges encountered in designing their evaluation plans, and how they navigate their challenges. Findings have implications for purposes and approaches of teacher professional learning and offer insights into the re-design of learning opportunities to transform educators’ epistemological beliefs in general and in relation to discipline-specific learning.

Context: Proposed more than two decades ago, culturally relevant/responsive teaching or pedagogy (CRP) is one promising approach to transforming the education experience of historically marginalized groups. The development of CRP has since inspired changes in teacher education programs and resulted in considerable research on preparing teachers for CRP. However, critics have argued that much work on CRP has not fulfilled its transformative potential of addressing racism and the white-supremacist foundations underlying teacher education research and practice and have urged CRP research to grow from the existing knowledge base and to innovate. Purpose of Study: This study critically examines the research practices of empirical studies on preparing K-12 preservice teachers for CRP in the United States by merging ideas of research as social practice with critical race theory, critical whiteness studies, and Indigenous epistemologies to argue for research as racialized social practice. The goal is to provide perspectives and lines of research that are true to the radical shifts the original theories called for, yet might not have been fully fulfilled. Research Design: This critical literature review applies the research-as-racialized-social-practice lens to examine how CRP research studies frame problems and research questions, elaborate theoretical frameworks and research methodology, and discuss findings and implications. Our analysis positions CRP research on the research-as-racialized-social-practice continuum, ranging from maintaining the racist status quo to intentionally disrupting it. Findings: Our analysis reveals that dominant research practices—emphasizing the problem of individual deficiencies rather than inequitable systems, employing a research logic focusing on linearity rather than complexity, and lacking in-depth examination of racialized and cultural ways of knowing for both researchers and participants—maintain the inequitable status quo rather than disrupting taken-for-granted assumptions and practices. While we recognize the important work and useful knowledge accumulated by this body of literature over two decades, we urge teacher educators and researchers to stay vigilant and resist research epistemologies and practices that recenter, recycle, and maintain whiteness, perpetuating the racist status quo. Conclusions: We recommend that teacher education researchers can construct research questions capable of generating new knowledge to disrupt racial injustice; utilize and further develop critical theoretical frameworks that sufficiently attend to various aspects of race and racism in teaching, learning, and society, and are meaningfully linked to disruptive research methodologies; and, finally, attend clearly to the ability of research to disrupt the racist status quo within their findings and implications.

This study presents the development and implementation of a novel approach to measure enactment of equity-centered teaching practice. The construct of practice for equity is drawn from international syntheses and the details of the scenario-format scale development are emphasized. The result is a 15-item Teaching Equity Enactment Scenario (TEES) Scale that measures a meaningful continuum of levels of teaching practice for equity. The scale also provides a narrative interpretation of participants’ levels of enacting equity-centered practice based on their simple raw scores. The implications for research on teaching and teacher education are discussed.