| This study was designed to characterize the culturally responsive communication practices of effective teachers of African American students. Research on the roles of culture and communication in teaching and successful teachers of African American students were used to develop a conceptual framework for examining culturally responsive teacher communication. The questions guiding this investigation were (1) What are the communicative practices of successful teachers of African American middle school students;? (2) What makes the communication styles of teachers of African American students in diverse classrooms culturally responsive.;? and (3) What effects do the use of culturally responsive communicative and interaction styles have on the achievement of African American students? Qualitative methods were used to collect data from three middle school teachers (two European American and one African American), who were nominated by African American community stakeholder groups within a large metropolitan school district in the Pacific Northwest. Data included audiotaped teacher interviews, group interviews with African American students, and videotaped classroom observations. Findings showed five distinct African American discourse features used in varying forms and degrees by the participating teachers. They were direct address; conversational style; use of culturally-specific vocabulary, phrasing, and sayings; African American cultural references; and rhythmic and dramatic speech. Two others, repetition and nonverbal communication, were not identified as separate categories because they occurred throughout teacher talk as nuances of the other features. Each of the discourse features was characterized by its lexical, semantic, syntactic, and prosodic attributes. The findings also revealed that teachers' beliefs about African American students, experiences with African American culture, and knowledge of African American communication informed their use of African American discourse features during instruction. Data derived from student interviews further explicated how teachers used African American communication features, and how these behaviors were perceived by students. This study adds more illustrative examples to the scholarship about what cultural responsiveness sounds and looks like in teaching practice. |
