Learning To Become Culturally Responsive Critical Inquirers: A Never Ending Journey

This dissertation explores the nuances of becoming a culturally responsive critical inquirer. A postcritical ethnographic case study offered the frame to describe my attempts to produce and implement culturally responsive curriculum with two teachers in a bilingual second grade classroom. Data included participant observations over a six–month period, field notes from classroom observations, interviews to different stake holders, and documents and artifacts analysis. I used narrative to provide an ethnographic description of the site, and to describe the research participants and our interactions. I did so in order to describe the ways in which personal histories, school, and district structures, combined with social conditions, circumscribed teachers’ responses to my invitation to work together to incorporate a culturally responsive stance into classroom practices. I relied on the dialogues and expressions that I audio recorded during my time with the teachers and subsequently transcribed and used these to present a multivoiced narrative that positions the participants as collaborators in this study