Development of an instrument to measure a facet of quality teaching: Culturally responsive pedagogy

• The paper reports Phase 2 of a larger project.
• The overall research aims to raise Australian Indigenous students’ academic outcomes.
• An instrument for culturally responsive pedagogy was validated via Rasch analysis.
• Results show the instrument is unidimensional and reflects seven subscales.
• The instrument is sensitive to nuances in pedagogy & can measure quality teaching.

This paper presents findings of Phase 2 of a larger three phase study examining culturally responsive pedagogies and their influence on Indigenous student outcomes. Characteristics of culturally responsive pedagogies obtained through interviews with Australian Indigenous1 parents and students generated characteristics and themes which were distilled into survey items. The resulting instrument was applied to practicing teachers for validation.The survey was piloted on a sample of 141 elementary and secondary teachers from diverse schools. Analyses using Item Response Theory, employing the Rasch model, confirmed that the instrument measured a unidimensional latent trait, culturally responsive pedagogy. Seven subscales, initially qualitatively determined, were statistically confirmed. The instrument proved suitable to measure nuances in pedagogy and to detect significant differences between elementary and secondary teachers.