Understanding Others: How Cultural Awareness Affects Teaching Practices

There are many factors that can affect a teacher’s classroom practices. The increase in awareness of diversity in classrooms, in recent years, has brought up the importance of assessing teachers’ level of cultural understanding. In this paper, the effect of cultural awareness on a student teacher’s classroom practices in a third grade general education classroom and a learning support classroom. The data for this self-study was conduct by analyzing daily journal entries that chronicled how teaching practices were impacted by awareness of the cultural diversity in the classroom. Four codes were used to organize the data taken from the journal entries. The four codes that were used were the use of visuals, use of gestures, use of native language, and understanding of others’ cultures. These four codes describe how a teacher’s classroom practices were affected by their own understanding of their students’ cultural identities