Portraiture: How Caucasian teachers build trusting relationships and bridge the cultural divide

McClendon, Amber Lynn (2023) Portraiture: How Caucasian teachers build trusting relationships and bridge the cultural divide. Doctoral thesis, Northern Arizona University.

Preview

Text McClendon_2023_Caucasian_teachers_build_relationships_cultural_divide.pdf Download (920kB) | Preview

Abstract

Educators are continuously challenged with ensuring that their students are capable of reaching their full potential. While trying to push students to do their best educators must also work to ensure that they are creating an accepting and welcoming environment for the diverse learners of today. Despite the diversity of the classroom a majority of the teaching staff throughout the nation are Caucasian, middle class, and generally female. The purpose of this study is to portray the universal themes that are present when creating and maintaining trusting relationships with students from diverse backgrounds. The significance of this study is to provide schools and teachers with the tools necessary to create relationships with students of different backgrounds than themselves. Doing this will improve the experiences for both teachers and students within schools. The research design for this is a qualitative study using the portraiture methodology. Through the use of interviews and observations the research questions will be answered through the portraits of the individual participants. The participants of each portrait will consist of Caucasian high school teachers from two different campuses. The teachers’ portraits are educators who work in public schools in the Southwestern United States. These portraits will illustrate the complexities in building trusting relationships between students and teachers of differing backgrounds and ethnicities. These findings will reveal the factors and themes necessary in creating student-teacher relationships to ensure that the school experience for diverse students is a positive one.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Publisher’s Statement:	© Copyright is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the Cline Library, Northern Arizona University. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.
Keywords:	African American Students; Building Relationships; Caucasian Teachers; Culturally Responsive Teaching; Portraiture
Subjects:	L Education > LC Special aspects of education
NAU Depositing Author Academic Status:	Student
Department/Unit:	Graduate College > Theses and Dissertations College of Education > Educational Leadership
Date Deposited:	22 May 2025 17:04
Last Modified:	22 May 2025 17:04
URI:	https://openknowledge.nau.edu/id/eprint/6164

Actions (login required)

IR Staff Record View

Downloads