Title: Teaching at Hispanic-serving Institutions
Description: The purpose of this was study was to explore the use of two teaching practices (cognitively responsive subject matter and culturally responsive teaching) at Hispanic-Serving Institutions in the United States. The conceptual frameworks for this study were the Multi-Contextual Model of Diverse Learning Environments (MMDLE) (Hurtado et al., 2015), Blackwell and Lawrence’s (1995) framework on faculty work, and Neumann’s (2014) framework on cognitively responsive teaching practices and culturally responsive teaching (Ladson-Billings, 1994). Data for this study were culled from responses of full-time faculty to the University of California-Los Angeles Higher Education Research Institute’s 2013 faculty survey, a national, multi-institutional survey of faculty. Using ANOVAs and hierarchical linear models (HLM), the study estimated the effect of individual- and organizational-level variables on subject matter and culturally responsive teaching. The results of HLM models showed that women faculty, faculty who have won an award for their teaching, and those who believe all students can excel have higher culturally responsive teaching scores.

In contrast, faculty who believe it is up to individual students to succeed, and those who teach a hard discipline as characterized by Biglan’s (1973) typology of disciplines, have lower culturally responsive teaching scores. Of the organizational-level predictors used in HLM models, the selectivity of an institution was negatively associated with culturally responsive teaching, as was the percentage of Latinx students enrolled. For subject matter teaching, women faculty, tenure-track faculty, faculty who believe all students can excel, and those who spend additional time weekly preparing to teach have higher subject matter teaching scores. Faculty who teach a hard discipline, as characterized by Biglan’s (1973) typology of disciplines, and those who believe it is up to individual students to succeed have lower subject matter teaching scores. Of the organizational-level predictors, the percent of Latinx students enrolled in an institution had a negative association with subject matter teaching practices.