Discussion and Conclusion

These themes were identified because it validates the standards in the CRTP framework. The themes are also corroborates the thesis topics indicated in my Literature Review. As Diwadi explains, "When developing the themes, the author could bring in the concepts and issues that she had previously identified in her literature review" (Diwadi, 2020.) These themes reflect the effectiveness of CRTP in correlation to the data gathered in the unit plan and its corresponding results.

Figure 7.1 - Triangulation of three main data sources

Personal enjoyment was a reoccurring theme throughout the project. In the data that was analyzed in Figure 7.1, a great deal of sound bites collected from the students showed that they had positive interactions with the unit and the lessons that were presented. Some examples of these sound bites are found below:

"I like learning about culture because it's fun learning about other peoples culture."

"Our homework was so fun because me and my mommy made our recipe!

"I like learning about culture because it's good and because it helps me be smart!"

"Making musubis is so fun! It's my favorite food. I like to eat it all day!"

Words that are bolded are the coded words or phrases that reflect personal enjoyment in the students' experience. This theme was indicated because it supports the significance of implementing CRTP into the curriculum and fostering a pleasant environment for students in Early Childhood Education. As mentioned in the Literature Review, building a strong foundation that promotes student connection to the curriculum and cultivates parent/family buy-in is crucial for students at an early age because it sets the tone for their attitude towards their academic future. Because of the positive interactions and further conversations my students and their families had at the end of the unit plan (and the end of the school year,) it proves that they not only retained the content but felt a sense of connection and accountability to their learning journey. This project and its interdisciplinary unit plan could potentially be something that the students will remember for years to come and look back to as the grounds for their involvement in future curricula.

Another theme that was analyzed was the students openness to trying new things. A few examples of sound bites that support this theme with corresponding bolded coded words or phrases are as follows:

"My favorite field trip was the Foodland Farms field trip because it was so fun trying the food."

"I didn't like the chicken but that's okay, at least I tried it."

"[Learning about culture is important] so you don't disrespect other people and try their food."

"I like learning about other countries."

Being open to trying new things also supports creating a productive learning experience for students in Early Childhood Education setting. Moreover, it arguably meets all the standards of the CRTP framework. To refresh, the standards below are adapted from James A. Banks’s Transforming Multicultural Education Policy & Practice, Chapter 6 Culturally Responsive Pedagogy Framework by Tyrone C. Howard, 2021:

Teacher and students producing together through joint activity
Develop language and literacy competence across the curriculum
Connecting school to students’ lives by linking teaching and curriculum to students’ experiences at home and in their communities
Teaching complex thinking
Teaching through conversation, in particular engaging students in instructional conversations

With students showing that they are open to trying new things, this provides evidence for all five standards because of the they are enthusiastic about stepping out of their comfort zone and opening their horizons for the sake of the experience. For standards 1, 2, and 5, the students are actively involved in the learning process and demonstrating their competency levels by engaging in meaningful discourse when opening up to new experiences. For example, after trying something new, they are able to explain why they did or did not like it, but still be able to understand the opinions of other that may or may not differ from their own. To exhibit standards 3 and 4, they are processing their interactions through the connections they are making with each other and those around them (their families and community members) and again using those interactions to produce quality products which again illustrates standards 1, 2, and 5. Every interaction in the lesson is intentional and circles back to how they exemplify the effectiveness of Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices.

Finally, the theme of making connections from self to world was created from the gathered triangulated data as shown in Figure 7.1 Examples of this is shown below with coded words or phrases shown in bold:

"I like adobo! My mom makes that too!"

"We have the same beliefs. We need to be nice to people."

"Learning about culture is important because we get to know about how other people celebrate their holidays."

"Your family is from Japan?! My Uncle and Auntie is Japan too!"

Making connections from self to world is a significant theme because of how it supports most topics from the Literature Review and particularly standard 3 of the CRTP framework which is "Connecting school to students’ lives by linking teaching and curriculum to students’ experiences at home and in their communities" (Howard, 2021.) With students connecting from self to world, it bridges life experiences typically made at home with experiences made at school and breaks down the wall of school being the only institution of which learning takes place. It supports the value of making these connections in Early Childhood Education by implementing the students' Funds of Knowledge and allowing them to associate their home life with their school life. They're the ones who conceptualize these connections so this gives them the responsibility to share out and ultimately begins the process of the students becoming agents of their own learning experiences.

Student Progression

I also would like to touch on some of my students' progression throughout this project, specifically my English Language (EL) students. Although this project wasn't necessarily designed for just them in particular, I feel that their development is notable because of how much it allowed them to showcase their Funds of Knowledge and benefit from the content that was presented. Because they were able to relate to the content, they became more eager when it came to assignments that required them to display their literacy skills.

In previous years, I found that my EL students more than likely only looked forward to the Mathematics portion of the day because that was their strength. They weren't too fond of English Language Arts because they just simply found it difficult to write or speak to the topics that we covered. However, throughout this unit, my EL students were more inclined to participate in discussions, whether it be peer to peer or whole group. They became more confident to share what they know out loud because they could relate to what was being talked about. Because they were able to go home and discuss their life with their families, they became passionate with the subject. This actually does apply to all my students as well.

To be quite honest, I didn't pose this unit plan as an English unit to my students. Whenever we did cover lessons from my unit, it was always categorized under Social Studies or Science. Although they are actively producing numerous English Language Arts assignments, they thought we were only doing Social Studies or Science. I found that it gave them a sense of ease and they always looked forward to whenever they see Social Studies and Science on our daily schedules. Even though this was a heavily interdisciplinary unit, the students weren't really conscience of the literacy skills that they are developing. But I digress, although all my students benefitted from this intentionally disguised literacy filled unit, my EL students strengthen their literacy skills as well.

Discussion

Themes

After taking a look at my results, I focused on three of my data sources further validate my findings and create themes through triangulation (Figure 7.1). "Triangulation is the process of corroborating evidence from different individuals (e.g., a principal and a student), types of data (e.g., observational fieldnotes and interviews), or methods of data collection (e.g., documents and interviews) in descriptions and themes in qualitative research." (Creswell, 2012) "Themes (also called categories) are similar codes aggregated together to form a major idea in the database." (Creswell, 2012) The themes that were generated are:

Personal enjoyment
Open to trying new things
Making connections from self to world

Conclusion

Referring back to my purpose of this project, it was designed to answer the question, "Does Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices support students in understanding, appreciating, and honoring their culture and the culture of others in an early school setting?" My aim for this project is to encourage my students to explore their culture and learn about the culture of others. I also hope that my students were able to build a sense of belonging in the classroom, strengthen their relationships with their family, connect to community members, and build upon their literacy skills by gaining confidence in speaking, listening, and writing.

According to my results, I could tell that implementation of CRTP helped most of my students understand what culture is. The Pre-Survey showed that none of the students had a clue what culture is and why learning this topic is of any significance to them. However, by the end of the Unit, only two students out of could not provide evidence of learning the content presented. They both answered all three questions in the Post-Survey incorrectly and their response in their journal entry answering "Did you enjoy learning about culture?" was completely off topic. 15 out of the 17 students were able to correctly answer two out of the three questions of the Post-Survey. This shows me that they retained some of the information being taught or learned from the conversations or experiences they had.

I was also able to reflect and focus on what they students said, not just how they did. It was rather difficult for me to switch roles from practitioner to researcher. As an educator, we are taught to look at the students results and decipher the data based on how they performed. However, I really needed to look through a different lens and look back on everything I gathered and analyze WHAT they did throughout the unit. The intention of this project was to examine the effectiveness of CRTP on students, particularly their behavior towards understanding, appreciating, and honoring culture; not the effects it has on the curriculum and how they did. Once I was able to re-grasp what I truly wanted to get out of this project, that's when I could come to the conclusions and notice the recurring themes throughout the project.

In regards to answering the research question, I do believe that implementing CRTP support Kindergarten students in appreciating their culture and building empathy towards people in other culture groups. Most were confident when talking about their own culture to their classmates and were excited when they found similarities in their shared cultures. I believe that the pride that they had when talking about their own culture mirrors the interactions they had with their family members when having conversations about what is significant in their culture. The students also showed excitement when learning about other culture's customs and traditions. They were able to ask appropriate questions to further their understanding and were more susceptible to try new things in a respectable way. CRTP helped the students build upon their sense of belonging in the classroom. They are already very comfortable together in a social sense but they are also now able to engage in meaning and respectful conversations with each other. However, I can't say that I attribute this progression solely on the CRTP framework. There are programs in other content areas that also support creating a strong classroom culture such as building Mathematical discourse and ELA initiatives in Oral Language. I would say that having the CRTP framework present does help support a sense of belonging in a sense that they are more acceptable of each other's diversity and backgrounds, as explained above.

Also touched up earlier, the results showed me that the students were able to strengthen their relationship with their families through the assignments that were sent home. All of the homework was completed thoroughly and the parents expressed their excitement for the class cultural cookbook. I feel as though these assignments helped parents rediscover their culture as much as the students were learning about it in the classroom. It's hard to determine whether or not the students were able to connect with community members. The only instance of this is through our visit to Foodland Farms, which went very well but I feel is not enough to decide if this is something that the students were able to achieve or not.

Next Steps

I shared these findings with the Kindergarten team at August Ahrens Elementary. They decided that they will adopt my unit plan and incorporate CRTP into their curriculum for their Project Based Learning lesson. Unfortunately, I am not going to be teaching with them next year so I really hope that they are able to deliver the unit with its true intentions. There are some things that I would like to change about the unit plan's design and some advice for them to consider.

As I said earlier, it was hard to determine if students were able to fully connect with other members of the community because of the limited opportunities for this interaction to take place. Possibly finding additional community partners to incorporate community involvement and provide students with multiple opportunities for interaction would be ideal. I had options that I considered when initially planning this projects but it was never played out. Those options were organizations and businesses in the community such as Waipahu High School's Culinary Pathway Academy, Triple RT's Food Truck, Tanioka's Seafoods & Catering, and Highway Inn.

I would also find ways to include student choice into the lessons. This is always a struggle when working with Kindergarten students because they need direction but the most choice we had was in choosing what books we read for the read aloud. An idea I acquired when reading about CRTP is to have the students find and bring in books of their culture or a culture they want to learn about. This would be a great option to include in the unit plan because it gives the students the freedom to explore more about their culture or spark their curiosity about other cultures.

Furthermore, I would probably start teaching some cultural aspects earlier in the year. From the homework results, I learned a few new things about my students' background that I wouldn't have known otherwise. I feel that if we start exploring their cultures and providing these types of family involvement earlier, the students will get to know each other on a deeper level and build a more accepting classroom culture. Also, educators would need to have some background knowledge about the cultures that are presented in the storybooks implemented in the unit plan. It is important to really touch on this prior to reading the stories so that the students know the purpose of the literature.

A significant tip I would like to offer those who are implementing this unit is to bear in mind the intention of the project. Yes, we want our students to succeed and produce quality work but if that's the only result to aim for and that's what comes across, then this will essentially feel like just another lesson on your plate. However, if educators understand how transformative this unit can be, truly add meaning to it, and feel passionate about wanting to give the students and their families this experience to learn together then the unit wouldn't feel like something that we have to do, rather get to experience along with them.

As I will mention in my takeaways below, this project really impacted me as an educator and in my personal life. I was able to rediscover my own want to explore my family's culture while also learning about cultures around the world. Because I needed to familiarize myself with cultures of the books I read, I was able to look into information of the cultures of others that I probably would not have done before. Looking into my family's culture is also a topic a cover below.

My Takeaways

Through this project, I hoped to gain insight that would help me enhance my teaching philosophy for the future. Although I will no longer be teaching Kindergarten, I did learn a lot from this process that impacts my professional and personal life in the long run.

In the near future, I want to teach an upper grade level. I have been teaching Kindergarten for the past 7 years and Preschool for 5 years prior to that. The desire to teach an uppers grade comes from wanting to expand on my teaching capabilities. Although this project was designed for lower elementary, I feel that upper elementary (and even secondary) could greatly benefit from gaining clarity on their culture and their background. This can help my students in the future build a rapport of understanding with one another. This deeper understanding and appreciation can also help students gain insight on the injustices present in society. They'll be able to generate their own opinions and design their own projects that would benefit the world.

The process of this project taught me some lessons that positively affected my personal life. I grew up thinking that I shouldn't ask for help because it's me potentially putting my burdens onto someone else. However, there were instances in this process that I absolutely needed assistance from outside sources. I needed to find a way to fund our trip to Foodland Farms. This was a big dilemma for me because I didn't want to make the parents pay so much. I tried looking for grants, called multiple transportation companies for cheaper options, and even considered getting donations. Eventually, all I had to do was ask my principal and grade level if there's enough funds to cover this cost. I could've avoided the stress if I had just asked for help from those closest to me instead of trying to figure it out myself. I also learned that there isn't an age limit to learning. As an educator, constantly learning is part of my job. However, after seeing the involvement and enthusiasm from the parents and families in this project, I feel that I should further my own knowledge of my culture and background so I can be as proud as the families were. In addition, I realize how people are always willing to share their knowledge to those who ask. In the context of Funds of Knowledge, no matter what age a person is, they've acquired life experience in which they learned from and could be worth sharing with others. Being open to listen and learn is what I am actively teaching my students a useful trait to carry on as an adult as well.