Preparing Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teachers across Contexts: Community-Based Learning and Intercultural Telecollaboration

Utilizing a three-paper structure, this dissertation examines complementary approaches to supporting teachers in learning from and with one another as a community of educators developing their expertise to teach culturally and linguistically diverse learners. The first approach of community-based learning has a longer research trajectory because it examines the context of face-to-face tutor­ing, in which teachers work directly with diverse learners in a physical setting as part of professional learning and move through a feedback cycle, planning – enacting – feedback - reflection. The second approach shifts into a growing area of interest, telecollaboration, for teacher educators, particularly in second and foreign language teaching. This approach of telecollaboration is also known as virtual ex­changes, in which teachers build communities of practice with international teacher partners across cultures in online settings. The first paper, “Building Teachers’ Self-Efficacy by Infusing English Learner Supports into Professional Learning,” focuses on the community-based learning model that provides direct teaching opportunities for teachers in the United States to improve their instruction with English learners in a community setting. The second paper and third paper focus on the use of telecollaboration for teachers to become interculturally sensitive educators (Belz, 2003; Bohinski & Leventhal, 2015; Guth & Helm, 2010). In particular, the main body of the defense would be high­lighting a single paper, the third paper, to allow for a deeper dive into rigor, rather than a more curso­ry tour of three papers, given the time constraints of the defense