Dissertation Defense by Sarina Chugani Molina

Location

Mother Rosalie Hill Hall, room 135

Free

"Examining the role of meaning-making and cultural competence in how teachers understand and approach their work with culturally and linguistically diverse students" by Sarina Chugani Molina, in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Doctor of Philosophy.

Cheryl Getz, EdD, chair; Noriyuki Inoue, PhD, chair; Lea Hubbard, PhD, member

ABSTRACT
The tapestry of classrooms today is transforming into a mosaic of colors, languages, and backgrounds.  As the population of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students continues to rise, a deeper understanding of how teachers construct meaning and understand their internal and relational experiences when working with these students has become an important area to examine.

The purpose of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of teachers’ meaning-making systems and their cultural competence as it relates to their work with CLD students.  Kegan, (1982, 1994) provides a constructive developmental lens, which was used in this study, to understand how teachers construct meaning of their experiences.  Another multidimensional construct of cultural competence based on the concept of Cultural Intelligence (CQ) developed by Earley & Ang (2008) was also used as an additional lens to guide this research, particularly in understanding what types of cultural knowledge teachers utilize in their daily interactions with their students.

This study included in-depth interviews with ten public school teachers in the San Diego area. The first interview assessed teachers’ meaning-making systems using the Subject-Object interview protocol (Lahey et al.,1988) based on Kegan’s framework, and the second, used the ‘Cultural Competence’ interview based on the Cultural Intelligence Scale, to understand teachers’ cultural knowledge systems and manifestations of this as it relates to their work with CLD students.

While teachers’ meaning-making systems provided some insight into how teachers utilizing different systems approach their work with students from different backgrounds, the results from the cultural competence interview revealed its myopic nature in the attempt to understand teachers’ relational experiences with diverse students.  However, other qualities such as openness and care did emerge as areas that warranted further exploration.  Lastly, this study uncovered the complexity of the role of culture in these teachers’ relational work with their students, where teachers oftentimes claimed that the idea of culture was elevated beyond its level of importance.  Instead, powerful relationships appeared to be forged between teachers and their students through their ability to engage in bidirectional negotiation of meaning and through their contextual interpretation of their day-to-day, moment-to-moment interactions with their students.