In this chapter I return to a primary goal of the book previously stated in Chapter 1 – developing theories about the data that are consistent, credible, and formatted in such a way that they might be operationalized and tested through quantitative research. Rather than generate my own theories about the data, this chapter theorizes that there are evidence-based connections to be drawn between CUNY instructors’ values (thinking) and their use of classroom management strategies (action). I parse out themes from the previous four chapters onto two figures used to depict Model O-I and Model O-II learning systems. This analysis illustrates how the interview data indicate CUNY instructors experience elements of both Model O-I and Model O-II systems in the behavioral worlds they share on this campus.

This chapter builds from two frameworks (presented in Chapter 1) that action scientists use to explain how individuals’ theories-in-use shape their action strategies, which in turn yields important consequences for their behavioral worlds and learning processes within an organization. I explore how faculty participants at a high-performing MSI expressed Model I and Model II values as “value expressions,” and discuss how common elements in those expressions can have both positive and negative consequences for instructors’ learning about and from cultural differences between themselves and their students.

This chapter builds upon the foundation established in Chapter 1 to explore how urban teachers learn to assign and share culturally accepted meanings about their students’ cultures and the communities they belong to outside the classroom. It does so through a review of evidence in the literature reviewed of basic underlying assumptions, espoused values, and observable artifacts related to teacher thinking about students’ cultures as evidenced in the literature reviewed.

This chapter discusses dimensions of the master program frameworks associated with Model I and Model II theories-in-use that link Model I and Model II governing values to the actions they inform, as well as implications of those actions for an individual’s learning experiences and effectiveness. This chapter discusses how these Model I value expressions were coded and analyzed as precursors to negative consequences for teacher effectiveness at learning across student–teacher cultural differences. In later sections I discuss how Model II value expressions were analyzed as facilitators of the instructors’ effectiveness at learning across cultural differences.

This chapter explores consequences of the traditional and culturally responsive classroom management strategies reviewed in Chapter 11 from an action science perspective in depth. In the action science literature, action strategies that individuals use from the Model I perspective seek to: (1) design and manage the environment so that the actor is in control, (2) own and control tasks, (3) unilaterally protect themselves, and (4) unilaterally protect others from being hurt (i.e., upset, offended). Individual action strategies used from the Model II perspective seek to: (a) design situations in which they can experience high personal causation, (b) jointly control tasks, (c) understand protection of self as a joint, growth-oriented enterprise, and (d) bilaterally protect others. In this chapter, I substantiate these associations in the data by exploring how traditional and culturally responsive classroom management strategies are behavioral expressions of Model I and Model II values respectively – with corresponding consequences for CUNY instructors’ learning effectively across student–teacher cultural differences.

This chapter reviews directly observable data about K-12 urban teachers pertinent to the intrapsychic and psychosocial factors influencing their propensities to effectively learn across cultural differences between themselves and their students.

This chapter extends the argument that K-12 urban teachers learn through organizational socialization to adopt shared cultural meanings about their students that inform the individual actions they use to manage cultural differences between themselves and their students. It argues that these actions operate to increase, maintain, or decrease relational distance – or the perception that there is psychological status and structural distance amongst individuals within an organization – between teachers and their students. It also begins to develop the argument that urban-teacher actions may vary based on the nature of their organizational commitment – in particular how the type of commitment they have for their work informs their perceptions and management of various role stressors in their workplace environments.

This chapter combines insights from across the three literatures that inform the book’s central thesis to demonstrate how these disciplines speak to one another in ways that amount to a novel approach for resolving the knowing–doing gap introduced in the book’s Introduction. In marrying these interdisciplinary perspectives, the chapter concludes with recommendations for resolving lingering questions about how Model O-I and Model O-II systems in K-16 school contexts serving students from low-income and other minoritized cultural communities are established, maintained, or precluded altogether.

This chapter explores how instructors designed their classroom management strategies in response to the student challenges discussed in their interviews. It is guided by three research questions: (1) How do instructors enact traditional and culturally responsive classroom management strategies in response to challenging student situations? (2) To what extent does instructor use of traditional and culturally responsive classroom management strategies align with action strategies associated with Model I and Model II learning values in the action science literature? (3) From an action science perspective, what consequences do traditional and culturally responsive classroom management strategies have for CUNY instructors’ behavioral worlds?

This chapter explores the pervasive influence of a "white gaze" as it frames the collective action strategies K-12 urban teachers use to manage intercultural differences between themselves and their students, and how those strategies can operate to increase, maintain, or decrease relational distance with consequences for teachers’ cultural learning processes at work. It also discusses some key intrapsychic and interpersonal constraints on teachers’ cultural learning processes at work associated with the intergroup and group dynamics they share in urban schools.

This chapter introduces action science as a novel approach to reconciling the knowing–doing gap presented in the Introduction. It reviews primary goals of this discipline as established in its seminal literature, as well as central tenets and terms in this discipline that are foundational to the analyses featured throughout the book. It also presents evidence that action science is a suitable approach to reconciling this knowing–doing gap, because its central tenets and terms speak to consistent and recurring themes in the extant educational literature. I explain how the ladder-of-inference framework from this literature is used to investigate K-12 urban teachers’ inferential thinking about cultural differences in the literature review featured across the next six chapters.

This chapter reviews information about the demographic and democratic imperatives prompting K-16 educators to reconsider what they do not know about their students’ cultural backgrounds in urban schools and minority serving institutions (MSIs). It highlights the connection between the student–teacher racial mismatch characterizing K-16 contexts in the United States and a coexistent cultural mismatch. It makes an argument that these demographic characteristics present a human capital challenge that ultimately diminishes teacher effectiveness at learning across cultural differences between themselves and their students in urban schools and MSIs. It concludes by modeling this human capital challenge as a knowing–doing gap using a framework from the organizational literature.

This chapter begins by highlighting three ways in which K-12 urban educators and college faculty working in MSIs experience similar challenges managing cultural differences between themselves and their students from low-income and other minoritized communities. It then segues into the empirical portion of the book, by introducing the study context, as well as methods and materials used to collect the data analyzed in-depth across the following four chapters.

This chapter returns to the cultural psychology literature from which the term "cultural learning" originates, to explore evidence from the previous five chapters that K-12 urban teachers experience three types of cultural learning at work: imitative learning, instructed learning, and collaborative learning. It concludes by reconceptualizing cultural learning as a process of organizational learning, and with the argument that the cultural learning processes urban teachers typically engage in arguably diminish their capacities for acquiring critical cultural competencies.

This chapter summarizes evidence from Chapters 2 through 5 that organizational conditions in urban schools facilitate both single- and double-loop learning amongst K-12 teachers about their students’ lived experiences as racial and cultural minorities in American society. It builds the argument that even where urban teachers may take the initiative to engage in double-loop learning, prevailing cultural and organizational norms in urban schools make doing so nearly impossible.