Inquiry Project: Using Teacher Practitioner Research to Promote Multicultural Educational Values and Practices

For my inquiry project, I want to research how teachers are using teacher practitioner research to further explore multiculturalism in their classrooms and to promote multicultural, social justice oriented values. My curiosity in teacher practitioner researc has been developing more broadly for many months now. For a long time, I was extremely passionate about applied education research. I love qualitative research and education but I was more interested in exploring these interests in a non-profit policy-level setting, as opposed to in the classroom. This past school year, particularly after taking the "Curriculum and Pedagogy Seminar," which is the teaching methods course, I developed a much more serious interest in being a classroom teacher. I believe that that teacher practitioner research wonderfully fuses these interests of mine in research, education, and teaching. 

In particular, I am interested in reading books and articles about teachers who are using teacher practitioner research to promote multicultural teaching. I want to learn 1) How people are doing/using this research; 2) What they are finding; and 3) Why this matters/how this method is useful for promoting multicultural work. 

I want to further explore these research questions, methods, and findings because I want to use teacher practitioner research in my own classroom. I feel this form of work will benefit my teaching more broadly but is also particularly relevant to my goals as a multicultural educator. I am interested in working with student populations that likely come from different class backgrounds and racial identities than my own. Thus, I worry about my own white, privileged positioning in these contexts. I am interested in using teacher practitioner research to consistently reflect on and adjust my own practice to make sure I am being a just, caring teacher who is fair and non-discriminatory to all of my students.