Volume 19, Issue 2

Attracting, supporting, and retaining special education teachers of color (SETOCs) is critical in shaping a diverse special education teacher workforce in the United States. However, efforts to diversify this workforce are fraught with challenges at the federal, state, and local levels. This paper reviews what is currently known about efforts to attract, support, and retain SETOCs, and provides guidance for policy makers and researchers regarding what still needs to be done to realize a more diverse special education teacher workforce in the US. Four critical domains serve as the foundation for our guiding considerations: funding priorities, strategies to attract SETOCs, the role of educator preparation programs, and strategies to retain SETOCs.

This is a reflection brief on the psychosocial educational practices in higher education institutions in several Middle East Arab countries. These practices have influenced and led to the formation of current mentalities (i.e., the way of thinking about the prospect and outlook for the future) and realities in the region. The points recounted in this brief could be used as educational learning outcomes for higher education and formal schooling reforms. In the same way that failure is a result of within, success must also come from within.

The underrepresentation of people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds in geology, geophysics, and other STEM programs (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) is well documented in the United States. Only two universities out of about 107 HBCUs have geology and geophysics degree programs, even though there are over 400 universities in the United States that offer geology and geophysics degree programs. The low presence of these degree programs in HBCUs is a major barrier that has visible consequences. For example, Blacks and other CLD individuals are forced to be intellectually unchallenged, suppressed, and underutilized. Other consequences include low opportunities in college admission, employment, promotion, and life success. How can this problem be solved? This article addresses this question.

Social justice movements have sought public awareness and positive change for marginalized communities, including the intersection of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) and disabled students. Despite significant strides made to decrease the inequities experienced by marginalized communities, gaps still exist. Increasingly, the fields of special education and related services (e.g., social services providers who support disabled students in schools) have been encouraging and requiring their practitioners to be taught culturally relevant content, such as cultural competency. Despite the push to incorporate cultural competency training, no systematic approach to providing this training has been identified. The current systematic literature review was conducted to identify common practices for training cultural competency within social service professions. A search across five databases yielded 53 studies that met inclusion criteria. The results demonstrate that cultural competency content and knowledge is taught and measured using a variety of methods and assessments; cultural competency was most often taught within academic programs and assessed using the Multicultural Counseling Inventory. This review contains a variety of methods that have been shown to teach cultural competency and thus can be used by educational programs and organizations across the social service professions to aid in creating trainings for their practitioners.

Recent demographic changes in the United States have shown that we live in a multicultural society. However, for some reason, colleges and universities are still floundering in mediocrity when it comes to multiculturalism. What we see in higher education is multiculturalism that is fraudulent and unaccountable and the fact that individuals from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) and vulnerable backgrounds consistently endure White supremacy, racism, discrimination, and xenophobia, to say the least. In addition, we consistently see that proactive and measurable efforts are not made in the recruitment, retention, graduation, continuation, tenure, and promotion of students, faculty, staff, and leaders from CLD, immigrant, and vulnerable backgrounds. While there are well-written and documented policies, mission and vision statements, and goals and objectives in institutions of higher learning, there appears to be deficits in applicability and accountability measures of equity, diversity, quality, goodness, and fairness. Most strategies seem to be feel-good, look-good, fake, bandaid, and fraudulent approaches that are divorced from realities. How do we reverse these moves while respecting the traditional roles of higher education? This article responds to this critical question.

As the world continues to ponder issues of equity and diversity, U.S. public schools face an expanding demographic divide between teachers and students. While diverse groups of public school students show an increase in population, the teaching workforce in the U.S. remains overwhelmingly White. The purpose of this systematic review is to examine how preservice teachers (PST) are being prepared to be culturally responsive. A total of 26 studies published between 2006 and 2020 were reviewed. The results indicate that PSTs’ learning experiences are varied and tend to be stand-alone approaches focused on changing the attitudes and beliefs of PSTs. Findings also bring to light the vagueness of terminology used in the research to define cultural groups of students, the conspicuous absence of studies related to LGBTQ+ populations, and the lack of study replications. Implications for future research are discussed.

This study examined how 44 preservice teachers reflected on their teacher self-identities through exploring multicultural children’s books, which are published in different time periods, with a focus of analyzing characterization of main characters. The researcher collected data, including a multicultural book project, pre- and post-surveys on multicultural children’s literature and teacher identities, and a reflection paper. Data analysis consisted of looking for and coding emergent themes. The findings of the study showed that preservice teachers analyzed multicultural books from authentic perspectives, focused on how the authors used appropriate language, and examined trends in cultural details and illustrations published in different time periods. They analyzed characteristics of main characters by parsing the facts, by examining the context of the story, and by examining the personalities of main characters. They also refined their teacher identities and strengthened their commitment to become culturally responsive teachers by reflecting on the importance of equity, diversity, and inclusion and embedding high-quality multicultural children’s books into the curriculum. Implications and recommendations are also shared.

This study aims to determine the needs, expectations, problems and experiences of international students in the process of distance education. To this end, phenomenology design was used, and university students representing different departments and countries were selected through a purposive sampling method. A total of 11 international students participated in the study. An interview form was used for data collection. According to the findings, it was found that the participants did not experience any problems during the registration and admission process and could get enough support from the institution during the orientation and services process. The most common problem in the academic process is the language used by the lecturer. Also, the students mostly preferred the department they studied in line with their choices. Thanks to the repetition of the courses in distance education, they could overcome the language and communication barriers they experienced during the face-to-face education process. It was also determined that the students’ social relations with their peers and lecturers were positive, and they did not experience any adaptation problems. Finally, participants’ statements on financial challenges focused on the difficulties in both finding scholarships and supporting themselves.

The purpose of this survey study was to explore how the English language proficiency of Asian and Latin American immigrant parents influenced their levels of intergenerational challenges as reflected in their experiences with diminished parental authority, role reversal, acculturation gap, value discrepancy, family conflict, and emotional distance. The 86 participants were Asian and Latin American immigrant parents from eight classes at three adult ESL programs in Southern California. They reported lower levels of intergenerational challenges than was expected based on the extant literature, and their experiences were quite similar regardless of their adult ESL class levels. Overall, the parents from different ethnic backgrounds shared more commonalities than differences as language and cultural learners raising children in a new land. This study sheds light on the experience of immigrant parents raising children in ethnic enclaves and pushes against common discourses about immigrants’ acculturation. The findings suggest that preserving their linguistic and cultural heritage has become increasingly important to many immigrant communities and may play a crucial role in how they navigate their roles as parents.