Culture in the classroom: developing teacher proficiency in delivering a culturally-grounded prevention curriculum.

The authors describe the training model used to develop proficiency in teaching a culturally-grounded prevention curriculum. Teachers believed it vital to discuss substance use and considered culture and ethnicity central to students' lives, although few had experience teaching prevention curricula. Training effects were evaluated using three datasets. Analyses showed that training should emphasize teaching adult learners; encompass culture from many perspectives; address the teaching of prevention curricula, and emphasize fidelity as imperative. Trainers found the embedded focus on culture in keepin' it REAL essential to success. Teachers learned that a prevention curriculum can be instructionally engaging while theory-driven and academically rigorous.