Secretary of education, Arne Duncan, recently stated that America faced three great educational challenges that made the need to improve teacher preparation programs all the more urgent. Among these challenges is the realization that the status quo of teacher preparation programs will not adequately prepare future teachers to enter the profession and work with students of diverse backgrounds (Duncan, 2009). One reason for such a high turnover rate is teachers' lack of pedagogical knowledge about the students they will encounter in the classroom. The researcher focused on the effects of demographic variables on teacher's perceptions of five components of pedagogical practices: teacher efficacy, resiliency, cultural responsiveness, learning styles and parental involvement.

A 2x2x3 factorial design was used in this investigation. The independent variables were teacher preparation (regular and alternative); ethnicity (majority and minority); and years of teaching, (5 years or less, 6 to 10 years, and 11 years and above). The dependent variable was the teachers' perception scores regarding the five components of effective pedagogical practices.

The researcher found that the variables teacher preparation and ethnicity did not produce a significant impact regarding the teacher efficacy, cultural responsiveness, learning style, resilient thinking and parental involvement components of pedagogical practices. Years of teaching did not produce a significant influence on the self-efficacy, resilient thinking and parental involvement components.

However, the perceptions of teachers regarding the cultural responsiveness and learning style components were significantly affected by years of teaching. The variables teacher preparation and ethnicity, combined, did produce a significant influence on perceptions of teachers toward the cultural responsiveness and learning style components of effective pedagogical practices. The variables ethnicity and years of teaching, together, produced a significant effect on the teacher efficacy component of effective pedagogical practices. Finally, the variables teacher preparation, ethnicity, and years of teaching, collectively, did produce a significant influence on the cultural responsiveness and learning style components of effective pedagogical practice.