Graduate Program

School Psychology

Degree Name

Specialist in School Psychology

Semester of Degree Completion

Spring 2022

Thesis Director

Hao-Jan Luh

Thesis Committee Member

Margaret T. Floress

Thesis Committee Member

Assege HaileMariam

Abstract

The student population in the United States is becoming increasingly diverse, while the teaching base remains primarily white and female. One skill that helps educators form connections with students and decrease their biases is cultural competence. Thus, educators are often encouraged (and at times required) to participate in professional development training to increase their knowledge in this area. Although previous research has examined educator benefits from professional development trainings in general, and from trainings related to cultural competence, there is limited research into the benefit of online trainings intended to increase educator cultural competence. In this study, 17 educators completed an online training titled, “Critical Practices for Anti-Bias Education.” Additionally, they completed the Multicultural Teaching Competency Scale before and after the training to assess differences in multicultural competence. Results obtained using IBM SPSS software indicated a statistically significant difference between pretest and posttest scores. Participants also completed an adapted version of the Usage Rating Profile-Intervention Revised (URP-IR) after the training to measure the acceptability and feasibility of the training. Overall, participants ranked the training as acceptable and feasible. This study supports the use of online anti-bias training to increase multicultural competence.

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