Another participant explained, “Mr. Smith is favoring a certain group over another. He is making assumptions regarding students’ inability to follow directions.” These examples suggest that educators in this category have less cultural awareness than participants categorized as general awareness of culture. In many cases, participants categorized as little awareness of culture were only able to explain the most visible aspect of culture, such as dietary differences, and even then could make only a general connection rather than providing a specific explanation. One-word responses such as “culture” or “insensitive” were often given to explain differences without further elaboration. Additionally, the participants in this category expressed more deficit beliefs about students and families than educators with general awareness of culture.
When invisible aspects of culture were embedded in the scenarios, neither those with general awareness nor those with little cultural awareness identi- fied the conflict as culturally based. Rather, they attributed the problem to a lack of effective instruction or to a deficiency in students or parents. In response to the scenario centering on two Latino students who approached the teacher in regard to completing a class assignment, one educator responded, “Students are unclear about the assignment—perhaps due to lack of language.” Another indicated:
They could have a fear of a wrong answer. She is going to pick the “best” ones. Students assume there is a right and wrong answer. ... She should have taken the time to understand why they are uncertain of their responses.
A third explained, “As the teacher I would continue to work with these stu- dents and do my best to meet their needs. Obviously they have a need for approval or additional explanation of directions for assignments.” Another participant replied, “I would have recognized the students were confused and not confident to do the assignment independently.”
Participants in both of these categories tended to cite technical solutions (e.g., “use a data inquiry process,” “put more rules in place,” “orient par- ents”) as a means to address the clashes occurring in the leadership scenarios. This tendency to use technical solutions suggests limited ability to apply cul- tural knowledge. For example, although 58 (63%) of the educators in these two groups found it problematic that teachers in one of the scenarios identi- fied students and parents as the greatest challenges to improving achieve- ment, only 16 of these 58 educators (28%) reported they would directly address teacher attitudes, a necessary step in creating culturally responsive classrooms and schools. Out of the 16 educators, 3 are teachers, while 13 are educational leaders.
The remaining 42 of the 58 educators who viewed the teacher perspective in the scenario as problematic stated they would implement a technical approach to deal with the “blame game,” or as one educational leader delin- eated, “Data analysis, failure is not an option, what do we have control over, what can we do to change results, short-term goals, long-term goals.” These may be necessary steps, but they fail to address the more significant problem of deficit beliefs, which stall or cease school improvement efforts (García & Guerra, 2004). Given these responses, it appears educators in this group may not have the cultural knowledge, skills, or comfort level to engage in the dif- ficult work of addressing deficit beliefs and may actually hold some of the same beliefs. In most cases, educators with general or little cultural aware- ness did not appear to promote multicultural understanding for all students. To the contrary, many of them indicated that diverse students and their fami- lies should be the target of change.
For these two categories, we found a marked difference between educa- tional leaders and teachers. Interestingly, 55% (21) of the teachers in this study fell into the general awareness of culture category, whereas only 38% (28) of educational leaders were included in this group. A higher percent of educational leaders, 44% (32), fell into the little awareness of culture cate- gory, while 29% (11) of teachers were in this same category. These data sug- gest that educational leaders in our sample have less cultural understanding than the teachers. Even when the one culturally responsive and three cultur- ally aware leaders are included, a smaller portion of educational leaders than teachers falls into the top three categories (i.e., culturally responsive, cultur- ally aware, general awareness), with 44% and 55%, respectively.
Culturally unaware. The 15 educators (14%) categorized as culturally unaware did not appear to consider culture as the basis for the clashes in the six sce- narios. A few of the educators in this category did use the word insensitive or sensitivity when discussing whether they would teach the book Huckleberry Finn, but this use referred to racial tolerance rather than to cultural under- standing. Moreover, the majority of the educators in this category seemed to believe the problems identified in the scenarios were a direct result of stu- dents or parents. They frequently indicated students or parents lacked the “proper” knowledge and skills or had attitudinal problems. As one educator stated, “The kids of low SES are, perhaps, diagramming based on their experiences—or have not been taught how to do a family tree when com- plexities arise.” A second educator responded, “Perhaps the kids see her [the teacher] as an expert or just need reassurance ... in time they will grow more self-confident.” And another explained, “Many kids don’t have goals or understand why education is important. Kids need to be taught the rules and why to be professionally successful. Parents need to have help understanding them as well.” Solutions offered by educators in this category centered on “fixing” culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse students and
families with the purpose of assimilating them into the culture of the school.