An investigation of the effects of a professional development on teacher efficacy and cultural competency in working with Latino English language learners
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Date
2017-06-26
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Johns Hopkins University
Abstract
Latino English Language Learner (ELL) students comprise of a large portion of students in the United States (Capps, Fix, Muray, Ost, Passel, Herwantoro, 2005; Suarez-Orozco, Rhodes & Milburn, 2009). Many, Latino students however, have lower levels of academic attainment when compared to other ethnic groups (Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 2010; Swail, Cabrera, & Lee, 2004). Teachers however do not feel fully prepared to teach students from diverse backgrounds (Tucker, Porter, Reinke, Herman, Ivery, Mack, & Johnson, 2005). Two constructs that have been found to be related to student success with diverse populations are teacher efficacy and cultural competency. Utilizing a quasi-experimental, one-group, pre-test, post-test design, this study sought to understand the effect of a monthly, 45 minute, four-part professional development series on both teacher efficacy and cultural competency on participants. Twenty participants from a suburban high school (grades 9-12) located in the mid-Atlantic region completed two scales both pre-test and post-test, and provided demographic data. Quantitative data found both insignificant and significant results. Teacher efficacy was evaluated based on Personal Teaching Efficacy (PTE) and General Teaching Efficacy (GTE). There were no statistically significant findings for PTE in participants based on gender, exposure to previous training, and ethnicity. For GTE there were no statistically significant results for participants with previous training or based on ethnicity. There was however an impact for female participants as a result of the four-part professional development series. For the construct of cultural competency there was an increase, specifically in White participants. These results suggest that that four-part professional development series has an impact on this construct.
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Keywords
teacher efficacy, cultural competency, school counselor, Latino, English Language Learner, Professional development