Exploring Pedagogical Choices of Preservice Teachers for Culturally Responsive Teaching

Teacher dispositions, knowledge, and skills influence decision making and pedagogical choices in the classroom. The various pedagogical choices that teachers make can result in an emphasis on "difference" that excludes rather than includes, and they can be represented as a spectrum of more, or less, culturally responsive teaching. Pedagogical choices are typically informed by underlying belief systems related to beliefs about teaching and learning; dispositions and the knowledge and skills developed as teachers (Yero, 2002). If, as Villegas and Lucas (2002) contended, there are six identifiable characteristics of culturally responsive teachers that lead to culturally responsive pedagogical choices in the classroom, then higher education institutions should be raising the consciousness of preservice teachers in this regard. Student teachers enrolled in South Africa's Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) programme complete a one-year course after an undergraduate degree in their subject specialisation to qualify as subject specialist teachers. This article intends to explore the beliefs, thinking, and dispositions of a group of PGCE students within the domain of each identified characteristic of culturally responsive teachers before they embarked on an extended period of work-integrated learning (WIL) in their journey to become teachers. An explanatory mixed-method design was implemented by way of an author-designed questionnaire and open-ended scenarios presented to the students. Findings from the research indicated that preservice teachers studying a PGCE appeared to make pedagogical decisions and choices based on culturally responsive, profession-based, or rules-based stances.