PA Teacher Education Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education (CRSE) Initiative Repository
Overview
This website serves as a repository of documents produced by 20 Pennsylvania teacher education faculty members engaged in a community of practice focused on the integration of culturally relevant and sustaining education competencies.
Between August 2022 and June 2023, through monthly meetings and independent exercises, participants in the “CRSE Community of Practice” explored, reflected upon, and ultimately integrated into a teacher education course or program element the Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education (CRSE) Competencies.
Shared within this site are original and revised course syllabi and program element documents, as well as written reflections and artifacts, all of which illuminate the stories of why and how these teacher educators integrated the CRSE Competencies into their work.
We hope that the materials included in this repository support the critical advancement of culturally relevant and sustaining education across the educational landscape in Pennsylvania and beyond.
Background
In April 2023, the Pennsylvania State Board of Education included the following language in its amendments to Chapter 49 of the Pennsylvania Code (relating to the Certification of Professional Personnel): “A Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education (CRSE) for Pennsylvania requires a genuine commitment to equity for all students.
At the core of CRSE is an anti-racist undertaking that aims to eliminate the systemic and institutional barriers that inhibit the success of all Pennsylvania’s students—particularly those who have been historically marginalized.
A Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education (CRSE) encompasses skills for educators, including, but not limited to, approaches to mental wellness, trauma-informed approaches to instruction, technological and virtual engagement, and any factors that inhibit equitable access for all Pennsylvania’s students.”
CRSE is necessary for learners to thrive academically and personally during their educational experiences. The diligent adherence to culturally relevant and sustaining education by people and systems ensures that learners’ backgrounds, identities, lived experiences, interests, and aspirations are acknowledged and valued in the curriculum as well as in interactions with peers, educators, and policies. Similarly, culturally relevant and sustaining education and education systems are critical for the recruitment and retention of teachers of color, as organizational cultures, working conditions, and relationships must also value the identities and contributions of these educators.
There are nine Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education (CRSE) Competencies that inform the preparation and professional development of teachers and other educators in Pennsylvania. These competencies must be integrated into teacher education programs by 2025 and into school districts’ in-service teacher professional development by 2024, as stipulated by Pennsylvania’s State Board of Education and Department of Education.
PA Teacher Education Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education (CRSE) Initiative
In 2022, the William Penn Foundation awarded a grant to Temple University’s College of Education and Human Development to support the implementation of the CRSE Competencies in teacher education in Pennsylvania. The funding was utilized to establish a community of practice for teacher education faculty from institutions across Pennsylvania and to facilitate the development of materials featured on this website.
Additional funding and opportunities for expanded collaboration now mean that the initial CRSE Community of Practice project will continue as the PA Teacher Education Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education (CRSE) Initiative.
Dr. Juliet Curci (she/her)
Project Lead and Principal Investigator
Assistant Dean of College Access and Persistence
Temple University
Luca Poxon (he/they)
Project Coordinator
Temple University
Dr. Donna-Marie Cole-Malott (she/her)
Project Co-Lead and Co-Facilitator
Assistant Professor of Professional and Secondary Education
East Stroudsburg University
Dr. Kelly McGinn (she/her)
Project Evaluator
Assistant Professor of Psychological Studies in Education
Temple University
The PA Teacher Education Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education (CRSE) Initiative’s Repository is a collaboration between Temple University and the Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium, for which Dr. Cole-Malott and Karen Parker Thompson serve as Co-Executive Directors.
Appreciation
The PA Teacher Education Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education (CRSE) Initiative’s Repository is possible because of 20 Pennsylvania teacher education faculty members’ commitments to their personal and professional growth. These faculty members spent a year working to understand, explore, and create the personal, curricular, and pedagogical shifts they believed were necessary to provide culturally relevant and sustaining education for their students and their students’ future PK-12 students. The initiative personnel from Temple University and the Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium thank these faculty members on behalf of the field of teacher education and the broader community. We ask that those exploring the materials available in the repository extend a generosity of spirit to our faculty contributors, recognizing and appreciating the vulnerability that has been gifted to us in their willingness to make public their personal and scholarly endeavors as documented here during this moment in time.
Process & Design
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Between August 2022 and June 2023, participants in the CRSE Community of Practice convened monthly to share and develop tools for integrating the CRSE Competencies into their teacher education courses or program elements. They used backwards design to reflect upon goals and to revise objectives, assessments, content, and structural elements of syllabi and other program elements. They crowdsourced articles, videos, assignments, rubrics, and other tools and resources for each CRSE competency. Participants utilized all these materials to revise their syllabi or program elements to better reflect the CRSE Competencies. Additionally, they further reinforced this alignment by incorporating land acknowledgements, identity statements, teaching philosophies, and more. Finally, the group reflected on the revision process and worked together to solve problems of practice.
(The materials included in this repository are the intellectual property of the faculty contributors and may not, at this time, have institutional approval for inclusion within program curricula.)
The CRSE Community of Practice utilized a cross-institutional collaboration model, which worked well for supporting the integration of the CRSE Competencies. Participants shared that this structure for collaboration was innovative within a context that is typically very siloed and recommended the structure as a model for others within Pennsylvania’s education ecosystem.
Accessibility and Disability Statements
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Identity, Name, and Pronoun Statements
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Land Acknowledgements
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Accessibility and Disability Statements
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Identity, Name, and Pronoun Statements
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Land Acknowledgements
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At A Glance
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Foundations
Social Foundations of Modern Education
CRSE Competencies 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9
Dr. Miriam Marguerita Gomez Witmer
Elementary, Secondary, Early Childhood
Methods
Teaching and Learning Literacy in the Middle Grades/Reading and Writing in the Middle Grades
CRSE Competencies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8
Dr. Wanda Brooks
Literacy, Middle Grades
Methods
CRSE Competencies 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Rochelle Peterson-Ansari M.ED
Special Education
Program Element
Building Cross-Course Cohesion Around CRSE Competencies
CRSE Competencies 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Dr. Chris Dean
Additional Resources
Repository Content Webinars
The PA Teacher Education Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education (CRSE) Initiative will be hosting webinars facilitated by the contributors whose work is included in the repository. Please see the Events Calendar of the Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium (PEDC) for more information.
Learn more about the Initiative and Contact our Contributors
If you would like to learn more about the PA Teacher Education Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education (CRSE) Initiative or be connected to one of our Repository contributors, contact Luca Poxon at luca.poxon@temple.edu.
Collaborate around the CRSE Competencies
If you would like to collaborate with other teacher education faculty and/or PK-12 educators on the integration and implementation of CRSE Competencies, please contact Antwoine Shepard at info@paeddiversity.org for information about PEDC’s CRSE Working Group.
Additional resources related to implementation of the CRSE Competencies are available on PEDC’s website: www.paeddiversity.org.