American educators are invariably confronting a “demographic imperative” that requires integrating more culturally responsive teaching and classroom management strategies into their practice (Banks, Reference Banks1993; Reference Banks1995; Cochran-Smith, Reference Cochran-Smith2004; Ladson-Billings, Reference Ladson-Billings1999a; Reference Ladson-Billings, Darling-Hammond and Sykes1999b; Lowenstein, Reference Lowenstein2009; Sleeter, Reference Sleeter2001). Three critical observations inform this argument: (1) demographic trends that predict that approximately 57% of the school-age population will be children of color by the year 2050; (2) the longstanding fact that the American teaching workforce is predominantly white, female, and from middle-class backgrounds; and (3) the observation that children from low-income and other minoritized cultural communities (LIMCCs) are disproportionately assigned to our nation’s most underserved public schools (Cochran-Smith, Reference Cochran-Smith2003; García et al., Reference García, Jensen and Scribner2009; Gay, Reference Gay1993; Jupp et al., Reference Jupp, Berry and Lensmire2016; Jupp et al., Reference Jupp, Leckie, Cabrera and Utt2019; Loewus, Reference Loewus2017; Sleeter et al., Reference Sleeter, Neal and Kumashiro2014; Talbert-Johnson, Reference Talbert-Johnson2006; Yost, Reference Yost2006; Weiner, Reference Weiner2000; Zeichner, Reference Zeichner1993). The demographic imperative is accompanied by a “democratic imperative,” which has “highlight[ed] the failure of schools to provide opportunities to learn for students who are from nondominant cultural and linguistic communities [and] are disproportionately represented in hard-to-staff schools” (Achinstein et al., Reference Achinstein, Ogawa, Sexton and Freitas2010, p. 97; Haycock, Reference Haycock2001). These observations – and matching demographic discrepancies in the higher education context – reflect the reality that a predominantly white K-16 teaching workforce yields a student–teacher racial mismatch that has significant implications for developing equitable learning environments for K-16 students (Freeman et al., Reference Freeman, Brookhart and Loadman1999; Gershenson et al., Reference Gershenson, Holt and Papageorge2016; Johnson and Pak, Reference Johnson and Pak2019; LaSalle et al., Reference La Salle, Wang, Wu and Rocha Neves2020; McCarthy et al., Reference McCarthy, Dillard, Fitchett, Boyle and Lambert2023; McGrady and Reynolds, Reference McGrady and Reynolds2013; Redding, Reference Redding2019; Reference Redding2022; Renzulli et al., Reference Renzulli, Parrott and Beattie2011; Rooney, Reference Rooney2015; Stearns et al., Reference Stearns, Banerjee, Mickelson and Moller2014; Weathers, Reference Weathers2023; Whipp and Geronime, Reference Whipp and Geronime2017). Together, the demographic and democratic imperatives make clear that educators everywhere must reckon with the probable likelihood that they will encounter cultural differences between themselves and their students no matter their choice in where or which level of students to teach.

Student–Teacher Cultural Mismatch: An Intractable Human Capital Challenge for K-16 Educators in Urban Schools and Minority Serving Institutions

We often assume that because teachers enter urban schools and minority serving institutions (MSIs) with their best intentions for making a positive impact on their students, they are prepared to do exactly as they have planned. However, research suggests that teachers working with students from LIMCCs rarely enter the profession with the cultural knowledge and understandings they need to effectively engage students and families from communities unlike their own (Brown, Reference Brown2013; Bryan and Atwater, Reference Bryan and Atwater2002; Cochran-Smith, Reference Cochran-Smith2003; Chou, Reference Chou2007; Craft, Reference Craft2021; Eckert, Reference Eckert2013; Evans et al., Reference Evans, Turner and Allen2020; Gay and Howard, Reference Gay and Howard2000; Melnick and Zeichner, Reference Melnick and Zeichner1995; Milner, Reference Milner2010; Milner and Laughter, Reference Milner and Laughter2015; Parkhouse et al., Reference Parkhouse, Lu and Massaro2019; Villegas and Lucas, Reference Villegas and Lucas2002). By the numbers, a student–teacher racial mismatch exists because the teaching workforce in both the K-12 and higher education sectors are disproportionately white, at 80 and 72 percent respectively (National Center for Education Statistics, 2023; 2024). Given that many white teachers come from different cultural and socioeconomic communities than their students from LIMCCs, this is also considered a cultural mismatch as more and more K-16 students are from non-white, lower-income backgrounds (Amitai and Van Houtte, Reference Amitai and Van Houtte2022; Correa et al., Reference Correa, McHatton, McCray, Baughan, McCray, Sindelar, Brownell and Lignugaris/Kraft2014; Kozlowski, Reference Kozlowski2015; Kramarczuk Voulgarides et al., Reference Kramarczuk Voulgarides, Fergus and King Thorius2017; Pollack, Reference Pollack2013; Recknagel et al., Reference Recknagel, Hong, Francis, Wang, Parsons and Lewis2022; Rogers-Sirin et al., Reference Rogers-Sirin, Ryce, Sirin, Dimitrova, Bender and van de Vijver2013; Vinopal and Holt, Reference Vinopal and Holt2019; Wiggan and Watson, Reference Wiggan and Watson2016; Wiggan and Watson-Vandiver, Reference Wiggan and Watson-Vandiver2019). The cultural mismatch is exacerbated by the fact that American schools tend to promote more individualistic than collectivistic cultural norms, the latter of which are more often familiar to students from LIMCCs (Castro, Reference Castro2010; Davis, Reference Davis1995; Fryberg and Markus, Reference Fryberg and Markus2007; Johnson et al., Reference Johnson, Allen and Gallo Cordoba2024; Rothstein-Fisch et al., Reference Rothstein-Fisch, Greenfield, Trumbull and Rothstein-Fisch2014; Stephens et al., Reference Stephens, Fryberg, Markus, Johnson and Covarrubias2012; Trumbull et al., Reference Trumbull, Rothstein-Fisch, Greenfield and Quiroz2001; Reference Trumbull, Rothstein-Fisch, Greenfield and Rothstein-Fisch2014).

Cultural-mismatch theory states that when educational institutions promote independent cultural values as normative, they reinforce structural and systemic inequalities that disadvantage students from LIMCCs both in school and outside the classroom in American society (Stephens and Townsend, Reference Stephens and Townsend2015; Stephens et al., Reference Stephens, Fryberg, Markus, Johnson and Covarrubias2012; Reference Stephens, Townsend, Markus and Phillips2012; Reference Stephens, Townsend and Dittmann2019). Though this theory was originally developed through research focused on the harmful effects of cultural mismatch for first-generation college students, there is evidence that K-16 educators also have negative experiences in response to cultural differences between themselves and their students. Student–teacher racial mismatch is a frequently cited source of job stress amongst K-12 urban teachers (Achinstein and Barrett, Reference Achinstein and Barrett2004; Bottiani et al., Reference Bottiani, Duran, Pas and Bradshaw2019; Gutentag et al., Reference Gutentag, Horenczyk and Tatar2018; McCarthy et al., Reference McCarthy, Dillard, Fitchett, Boyle and Lambert2023), and it has been shown to evoke negative emotions such as shame, anxiety, guilt, depression, and anger in them as well (Bettini and Park, Reference Bettini and Park2021; Ladson-Billings, Reference Ladson-Billings1999a; Sugrue, Reference Sugrue2020; Utt and Tochluk, Reference Utt and Tochluk2020). Cultural mismatch invokes job stress and anxiety in K-12 urban teachers and higher education faculty working with students from LIMCCs alike. Like their K-12 counterparts in urban schools, college faculty working in MSIs typically have little to no opportunity for engaging in critical reflection on their own cultural competencies and perspectives at work (Bottiani et al., Reference Bottiani, Duran, Pas and Bradshaw2019; Cochran-Smith and Villegas, Reference Cochran-Smith, Villegas, Lampert and Burnett2016; Goldenberg, Reference Goldenberg2014; Grant and Gibson, Reference Grant and Gibson2011; Hambacher and Ginn, Reference Hambacher and Ginn2021; Howard, Reference Howard2003; Jackson and Knight-Manuel, Reference Jackson and Knight-Manuel2019; Larrivee, Reference Larrivee2000; McAllister and Irvine, Reference McAllister and Irvine2002; Villegas, Reference Villegas2007). The totality of these circumstances has generated a human capital challenge for schools serving students from LIMCCs of all ages: how to attract and retain not only well-intentioned teachers, but those who can enact cultural responsivity through their teaching and classroom management strategies.

Modeling Implications of K-16 Student–Teacher Cultural Mismatch as a Knowing–Doing Gap

In Figure I.1, I model this human capital challenge as a knowing–doing gap (Pfeffer and Sutton, Reference Pfeffer and Sutton2000), which is a framework in the organizational literature used to describe the gap between what individuals and organizations know to do in theory and what they are able to do in practice. While the knowing–doing gap has been explored as a gap between researchers and practitioners in the educational literature (Ball, Reference Ball2012; Donovan, Reference Donovan2013; Marsh and Farrell, Reference Marsh and Farrell2015), this book is concerned with the knowing–doing gap that precludes well-intentioned teachers who know the importance of culturally responsive teaching and classroom management in theory from implementing those culturally responsive practices at work. I model this gap for K-16 educators together because although K-12 teachers and college faculty work in very different institutional contexts, research shows they share psychosocial challenges associated with managing cultural differences between themselves and students from LIMCCs. Box 1 in this figure represents a primary driver of this challenge that we have been discussing to this point: K-16 educators are aware of the cultural differences between themselves and their students, and are at minimum exposed to the concepts of culturally responsive pedagogy and teaching through teacher education. Box Two represents what we do not know about K-16 educators beyond the racial demographic composition of the teaching workforce – specifically, how does an educator’s personal background or experiential knowledge of other cultures impact their interpretation of what it means to be culturally responsive through their actions? This box represents something we know that K-12 teachers and college faculty working with students have in common: their thinking and actions at work are strongly informed by culturally biased attitudes cultivated across their personal, professional, and social lives outside the classroom (Askell-Williams et al., Reference Askell‐Williams, Murray‐Harvey and Lawson2007; Canning et al., Reference Canning, Muenks, Green and Murphy2019; Chang and Viesca, Reference Chang and Viesca2022; Chesler et al., Reference Chesler, Lewis and Crowfoot2005; Davis, Reference Davis1995; Demoiny, Reference Demoiny2017; Dunac and Demir, Reference Dunac and Demir2017; Espinoza and Rincón, Reference Espinoza and Rincón2023; Flores and Rodriguez, Reference Flores and Rodriguez2006; Gehrke, Reference Gehrke2005; Gershenson et al., Reference Gershenson, Holt and Papageorge2016; Hampton et al., Reference Hampton, Peng and Ann2008; Han et al., Reference Han, Vomvoridi-Ivanović, Jacobs, Karanxha, Lypka, Topdemir and Feldman2014; Hubbard and Stage, Reference Hubbard and Stage2009; Kennedy, Reference Kennedy2008; Kezar, Reference Kezar2001; Kunesh and Noltemeyer, Reference Kunesh and Noltemeyer2019; Liston and Zeichner, Reference Liston and Zeichner1990; Long, Reference Long2023; Lytle et al., Reference Lytle, Portnoy, Waff and Buckley2009; McAllister, Reference McAllister1999; Morton et al., Reference Morton, Jackson and Jackson2020; Park et al., Reference Park, Wilton, Lo, Buswell, Suarez and Sato2024; Payne, Reference Payne1994; Pendakur and Furr, Reference Pendakur and Furr2016; Rockoff et al., Reference Rockoff, Jacob, Kane and Staiger2011; Shultz et al., Reference Shultz, Nissen, Close and Van Dusen2022; Sirin et al., Reference Sirin, Ryce and Mir2009; Smylie and Kahne, Reference Smylie and Kahne1997; Tatto, Reference Tatto1998; Vanlommel and Schildkamp, Reference Vanlommel and Schildkamp2019; Vázquez-Montilla et al., Reference Vázquez-Montilla, Just and Triscari2014; Warren et al., Reference Warren, Goins, Locklear, Unger, Locklear, Neal and Robinson2020; Welch et al., Reference Welch, Pitts, Tenini, Kuenlen and Wood2010; Zembylas, Reference Zembylas2003).

Figure I.1 Modeling a knowing–doing gap for K-16 educators working with students from LIMCCs, with effect of an interaction between mediating variables.

This can be particularly counterproductive where educators are missing opportunities to engage in critical reflection about the limits of their knowledge and understanding with regards to how students’ cultural differences shape their academic experiences in urban schools and MSIs (Bergeron, Reference Bergeron2008; Bennett et al., Reference Bennett, Driver and Trent2019; Boutte and Jackson, Reference Boutte and Jackson2014; Housel and Harvey, Reference Housel and Harvey2009; Sondel et al., Reference Sondel, Kretchmar and Hadley Dunn2022; Warren, Reference Warren2018; Young, Reference Young2011; Zhu, Reference Zhu2023). There is also research in the K-12 literature that suggests that educators working with students from LIMCCs rely on deficit narratives and stereotypes to justify blaming students, their families, and their cultural communities for their academic failures rather than self-examining their own beliefs and actions (Day and Hong, Reference Day and Hong2016; Obidah and Howard, Reference Obidah and Howard2005). Deficit dialogue reinforces self-fulfilling prophecies about students’ academic potential rooted in beliefs that LIMCCs are “dysfunctional, and therefore the reason for [their students’] low educational and later occupational attainment” (Solorzano, Reference Solorzano1997, p. 13; also Aronson, Reference Aronson2020; Halvorsen et al., Reference Halvorsen, Lee and Andrade2009; Jussim and Harber, Reference Jussim and Harber2005; López, Reference López2017; McKown et al., Reference McKown, Gregory, Weinstein, Meece and Eccles2010; Patton, Reference Patton2016; Rojas and Liou, Reference Rojas and Liou2017; Solorzano and Yosso, Reference Solorzano and Yosso2001; Villegas and Lucas, Reference Villegas and Lucas2002; Watson et al., Reference Watson, Charner-Laird, Kirkpatrick, Szczesiul and Gordon2006; Weinstein et al., Reference Weinstein, Gregory and Strambler2004; Zirkel and Pollack, Reference Zirkel and Pollack2016).

Deficit assumptions about LIMCCs are such consistent influences on the interpersonal dynamics students from LIMCCs share with their teachers across K-16 contexts that by the time they get to college they themselves are considered the problem. This is evident in the higher education literature where student–teacher conflict involving students from LIMCCs is made attributable to students’ “social disabilities,” or cause for labeling them as “disruptive” or “uncivil” with the reasoning that their behavior is an extension of the dysfunction they experience at home (Burke et al., Reference Burke, Karl, Peluchette and Evans2014; Gallagher and Haan, Reference Gallagher and Haan2018; McKinne and Martin, Reference McKinne and Martin2010; McNaughton-Cassill, Reference McNaughton-Cassill2013; Morrissette, Reference Morrissette2001; Nordstrom et al., Reference Nordstrom, Bartels and Bucy2009; Rehling and Bjorklund, Reference Rehling and Bjorklund2010; Seeman, Reference Seeman2009). Only recently have concerted efforts been made to standardize professional learning opportunities through which teachers and faculty working with students from LIMCCs can engage in critical reflection on their cultural lenses and perspectives (Bhabha et al., Reference Bhabha, Giles and Mahomed2020; Freda et al., Reference Freda, González-Monteagudo and Esposito2016; Gorski and Dalton, Reference Gorski and Dalton2020; Liu, Reference Liu2015; Russo-Tait, Reference Russo‐Tait2022; Waite, Reference Waite2021; Zeichner and Liston, Reference Zeichner and Liston2013).

Much of the research that has been done on the gap between what K-12 teachers of students from LIMCCs intend to do and what they are able to do in practice is focused on the contextual factors in and surrounding urban schools that make it difficult for them to do their best work (Cucchiara et al., Reference Cucchiara, Rooney and Robertson-Kraft2015; Johnson et al., Reference Johnson, Kraft and Papay2012; Kardos et al., Reference Kardos, Johnson, Peske, Kauffman and Liu2001; Kraft et al., Reference Kraft, Papay, Johnson, Charner-Laird, Ng and Reinhorn2015; Kukla-Acevedo, Reference Kukla-Acevedo2009; Mirra and Rogers, Reference Mirra and Rogers2020; Ni, Reference Ni2012; Tractenberg, Reference Tractenberg1973). An analogous void exists in the higher education literature, where discussions of instructors’ personal backgrounds are largely deprioritized in comparison to their perceived difficulties working through situational challenges specific to their institutional contexts. As a result, there has been little inquiry as to how interpersonal consequences of the student–teacher racial mismatch may be exacerbated by the socialization processes K-16 educators experience prior to joining the profession – specifically in how these processes shape teachers’ work attitudes and beliefs about their students’ cultures. More, developing such opportunity for reflection on teacher socialization with regards to beliefs about students from LIMCCs in particular seems increasingly harder to implement as academia experiences a “diversity fatigue,” whereby even people who are well-intentioned and interested in diversity-related issues become demotivated to do diversity-related work (Smith et al., Reference Smith, McPartlan, Poe and Thoman2021).

Box Three represents these and other contextual factors in schools serving students from LIMCCs influencing K-16 educators’ thinking and actions at work. The dotted lines between Boxes Two, Three, and Four represent the vastly underexplored interaction between these contextual factors and educators’ personal backgrounds, as well as the impact of that interaction on what educators are able to do in terms of enacting their best intentions to provide culturally responsive care through their actions. Box Four represents the data I mine throughout this book to address the central question of the extent to which educators’ actions in urban schools and MSIs represent their beliefs about the importance of providing culturally responsive care as moderated by the interaction between their personal backgrounds and contextual factors in their workplace environments.

Overview of the Book

Across the first six chapters of this book, I reconceptualize cultural learning as a process of inferential thinking through which K-16 educators learn to develop conclusions about their students’ cultural communities and cultural differences based on evidence and reasoning through various socialization processes. Cultural learning is a term borrowed from the cultural psychology literature, but I theorize that – by its own definition – cultural learning requires that individuals engage in processes of inferential thinking, by selecting data from their environments and applying learned reasoning to that data in order to draw conclusions. Thus, cultural learning is critical for K-16 educators interested in developing a “critical cultural consciousness [that] involves thoroughly analyzing and carefully monitoring both personal beliefs and instructional behaviors about the value of cultural diversity, and the best ways to teach ethnically different students for maximum positive effects” (Gay and Kirkland, Reference Gay and Kirkland2003, p. 182; Olmedo, Reference Olmedo1997; Valentíin, Reference Valentíin2006). College faculty working with students from LIMCCs are in particularly urgent need of new strategies for providing the psychosocial supports these students need to be successful in college (Delima, Reference Delima2019; Engstrom and Tinto, Reference Engstrom and Tinto2008; Kiyama and Rios-Aguilar, Reference Kiyama and Rios-Aguilar2017; Stebleton et al., Reference Stebleton, Soria, Aleixo and Huesman2012).

Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of action science, the organizational discipline whose conceptual and theoretical frameworks heavily inform every aspect of this book from its structure to the data analysis featured in later chapters. I explain that it makes sense to apply action science to the knowing–doing gap posing a human capital challenge for K-16 educators working with students from LIMCCs, because it is focused on the gap between what people think they can do in theory and what they are actually able to do in practice. Action science and its ladder-of-inference framework offer one set of tools for examining how educators in urban schools and MSIs learn what constitutes “normal” student behavior, and to adhere to underlying beliefs and espoused values embedded in their organizational (school) cultures in general. Chapters 2 through 6 are organized using a modified version of the ladder of inference that I adapt for use in evaluating various social, organizational, and psychological factors influencing K-12 educators as gleaned through a systematic review of the educational research on urban teacher thinking. The literature review includes studies focused on more traditional notions of variance amongst students from LIMCCs, in terms of their race and class. Chapter 7 outlines some theory-driven ways in which this literature review supplies evidence that cultural learning is a viable antidote to the intractability of this knowing–doing gap through future research, especially as it appears teachers are more likely to leave schools serving students from LIMCCs, and teachers of color are leaving the profession in droves (Carver-Thomas and Darling-Hammond, Reference Carver-Thomas and Darling-Hammond2017; Grooms et al., Reference Grooms, Mahatmya and Johnson2021; Ingersoll and May, Reference Ingersoll and May2011; Ingersoll et al., Reference Ingersoll, May and Collins2019; Podolsky et al., Reference Podolsky, Kini, Bishop and Darling-Hammond2016; Simon and Johnson, Reference Simon and Johnson2015; Sutcher et al., Reference Sutcher, Darling-Hammond and Carver-Thomas2016).

Chapter 8 introduces the empirical work featured in the second half of the book; it elaborates on how teachers’ cultural learning challenges follow students from LIMCCs across K-16 education contexts, and details the study context and methods used for the research featured in the following chapters. Chapters 9 through 13 are focused on fieldwork I conducted at the City University of New York (CUNY), through interviews with sixty-two part- and full-time instructional faculty who were asked their impressions of six situations representing common challenges CUNY students experience managing culturally specific responsibilities outside the classroom alongside their academic work. These chapters expand the traditional notion of variance amongst students from LIMCCS to include subgroups defined by their intersectional identities, specifically as student-workers, student-parents, and as members of their cultural communities in their everyday lives. Consistent with my interest in the gap between teacher knowledge and teacher action in urban schools and MSIs, these chapters explore how instructional staff varied by: (1) their orientations for learning about students’ cultures, as demonstrated through the espoused and enacted values guiding their action strategies and (2) their use of traditional and culturally responsive classroom management (CRCM) strategies in response to these situations.

Through a comprehensive review of the social and organizational factors influencing K-12 urban teachers’ cultural learning processes at work and interviews with instructional staff working at a high-performing MSI, this book highlights parallel challenges K-16 educators experience learning across cultural differences between themselves and their students through imitative, instructed, and collaborative cultural learning processes at work. In Chapter 13, I conclude the empirical inquiries by reviewing evidence in the data that faculty working on this CUNY campus variably experience features of two types of learning systems outlined in the action science literature that impact their abilities to learn about their students’ cultures at work. I conclude with some recommendations for developing future research on this knowing–doing gap towards the purpose of facilitating organizational learning systems in K-16 contexts that facilitate both error detection and correction in safe spaces for instructors to explore their mistakes without fear.