Engaging Preservice Teachers in Reader's Theatre: Promoting Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching

The demographic landscape of the elementary classroom continues to grow more diverse. Due to this increasing diversity, it is important that all educators, no matter the level of experience, are prepared to support all students, especially those from unique or under represented backgrounds. One way to assist educators in meeting these needs is to provide them with educational resources and effective teaching strategies that are culturally and linguistically responsive. A possible resource and teaching strategy is the literacy tool, Reader's Theatre. Considering this, the two studies contained in this dissertation provide readers with a glimpse of how Reader's Theatre may be used as a valuable resource to foster culturally and linguistically responsive classrooms. A content analysis (Berelson, 1952; Northrop et al., 2019; White and Marsh, 2006) of 141 Reader's Theatre scripts contained in the Best Class Collection (Young, 2019) was conducted to assess the cultural and linguistic authenticity of those resources. A thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) was carried out accessing preservice teachers' perceptions and understandings of Reader's Theatre as a culturally and linguistically responsive teaching strategy gauging the value of combining the two teaching strategies. Overall, the findings from these two studies may serve as starting points for future research in respect to the value of implementing Reader's Theatre as a culturally and linguistically responsive teaching strategy as discussions about culturally and linguistically responsive teaching remain prevalent in today's elementary school classrooms.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Education

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Curriculum and Instruction

Department dc:contributor.department

Education, Vocational-Technical

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Scott, William Paul

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Doolittle, Peter E.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Triplett, Cheri F.
• Bradley, Nancy Ann
• Fogelsong, Donna Fortune

• Reader's Theatre
• Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching
• Preservice Teachers' Perceptions

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:32011

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/113178