Culturally responsive teaching professional development for special educators in rural areas via digital learning technology.

Abstract

This study examined how participants perceived the experience of receiving culturally responsive teaching (CRT) professional development (PD) for special education teachers via short message service (SMS) in a rural area. Six teachers received the CRT PD non-formal learning course. To establish experimental control, the researcher used a convergent parallel mixed-methods design to analyze survey data and interviews, perform social network analysis, and incorporate data triangularization. The findings showed that participants perceived the experience of receiving CRT PD via SMS as good or excellent. Results also showed more advantages than disadvantages of receiving CRT PD via SMS in a rural area. The learner’s device may have affected learner-instructor connectivity rates during the study. Learners affected interconnectivity rates either at a lower or higher level based on the amount of learner-learner and learner-instructor connectivity that occurred. However, the practice of delivering PD via a mobile device exclusively through SMS is a new practice in the field of mobile learning