International Portal of Teacher Education
The online resource of academic content on teacher training and teacher education
Section archive - Multiculturalism & Diversity
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235 items
1
This research reports on studies conducted in two early childhood education (ECE) teacher preparation programs focused on increasing preservice teachers’ intercultural competence through intercultural teaching and learning and diverse US and international field experiences.
Study 1 took place at a large U.S. Midwestern university with the first cohort (n = 43) of preservice teachers to have completed the revised internationally focused program.
Study 2 took place at a midsized rural university in the U.S. Rocky Mountain region with preservice teachers (n = 9) who completed an eight-month university-led program with Nepal field experience.
The researchers used the same instrument to measure preservice teachers’ intercultural sensitivity – the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) – before and after completion of the respective programs.
The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences was used for the analysis of the IDI scores of participants; paired samples t-test yielded individual and composite results.
IDI pre and post results showed statistically significant increases in the composite scores for preservice teachers’ levels of intercultural competence for most participants.
Attributes of movement away from trivializing other cultures and toward recognizing cultural similarities, appreciation of and curiosity about cultural differences, and the ability to interpret phenomena taking place in a cultural context became evident.
Published: 2022
Updated: Jul. 12, 2022
2
A critical mass of literacy scholars have re-defined what it means to prepare reading teachers toward approaches that foreground culture, critical inquiry, and multilingualism.
An upsurge in research on critical approaches to prepare caring and conscious reading teachers has resulted, though fewer studies have examined the ways novice teachers worked through moments of crisis that often accompany anti-racist learning experiences.
This study reports findings from a qualitative investigation of seven prospective teachers’ coursework during their participation in an elementary reading methods course framed around culturally relevant literacy teaching for teacher learning.
Findings begin to document specific activities PSTs engaged in to productively struggle through crisis and suggest that preservice teachers can and should wrestle with the complexities of effective literacy teaching for African American and Hispanic readers in ways that lay the foundation for culturally relevant teaching.
Implications for literacy teacher education and research are included.
Published: 2021
Updated: May. 15, 2022
3
As culture is the core concept in multicultural education, this paper focuses on teachers' understanding of culture, which is a factor in implementing multicultural education successfully.
The present study investigates 231 generalist and bilingual pre-service teachers’ definitions of culture and whether or not there is a difference in the number of descriptors used by the groups.
To analyze the data collected through a survey, the author conducted a qualitative content analysis and then ran a 2 × 2 factorial ANOVA.
Although there is no statistical difference between the groups, bilingual pre-service teachers showed a deeper understanding of culture.
Published: 2022
Updated: May. 08, 2022
4
The aim of this study was to explore the role of social justice in multicultural education taught in teacher education.
The study investigated discourses on multicultural education among Finnish teacher educators, and the subject positions constructed in them.
Discourse theory analysis revealed six discourses on multicultural education, ranging from conservative to liberal and critical, with liberal discourses having the most articulations.
Although Finnish teacher education has taken steps towards social justice, the results also highlight racialisation and the subject position of the immigrant Other as themes that need to be challenged to prevent the reproduction of inequalities in teacher education.
Published: 2021
Updated: Mar. 13, 2022
5
Teachers in the United States are primarily White and female.
Thus, the education system is built on whiteness and maintains white supremacy.
One approach to disrupting racist outcomes is to increase the number of people of color pursuing teaching.
Yet, the ways that pre-service teachers (PSTs) are racialized often results in PSTs of color experiencing harm during teacher preparation.
Therefore, the purpose of this phenomonological study was to explore the racialized lived experiences of PSTs in a predominantly White teacher preparation program whose stated mission is to work to develop racially conscious educators who work toward equity and justice.
Participants were PSTs (n = 15) enrolled in a teacher preparation program in the Midwest who were placed into two focus groups, one that identified as people of color and one as White.
Focus groups discussed: their racialized lived experiences
(1) with faculty (2) with curriculum (3) with other PSTs (4) with cooperating teachers, and (5) with P-12 students.
Results from both groups suggest a lack of race content.
PSTs of color reported feelings of exclusion and limited racial consciousness of White peers and faculty.
Published: 2021
Updated: Mar. 08, 2022
6
This study examined factors linked to novice general education teachers’ perception of their preparedness to work with multilingual learners in the classroom.
Using a multilevel modeling approach, the authors examined factors at the teacher and school levels using two AY 2015 to 2016 datasets:
The National Teacher and Principal Survey from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Civil Rights Data Collection from the Office of Civil Rights.
The results show that teacher perception of preparedness was positively associated with teacher education courses on working with multilingual learners, supports received during the first-year teaching, and the number of multilingual learners teachers worked within their classrooms.
Similarly, the concentration of multilingual learners at the school level had a positive impact on preparedness.
Overall, it appears that experiences both learning about and working with multilingual learners are positively associated with novice general education teachers’ perceptions of preparedness to work with multilingual students.
Published: 2021
Updated: Dec. 22, 2021
7
This qualitative case study provides a deep dive into a teacher education program at Jackson State University, a Historically Black University (i.e. HBCU) located in Mississippi that is intentionally preparing Black men teacher candidates to successfully support the academic achievement of students in culturally diverse, low-income, and underserved schools.
Published: 2021
Updated: Oct. 26, 2021
8
This study explores the professional learning of ten pre-service teachers from Hong Kong and ten host teachers in a school in China who participated in a teaching abroad project.
The participants’ professional learning during the project is conceptualised within five knowledge domains of quality teaching for the twenty-first century:
personal, contextual, pedagogical, sociological and social.
The findings suggest that by immersing pre-service teachers in an unfamiliar teaching environment, they can learn professional knowledge for teaching in an increasingly complex world. This complements the knowledge they are acquiring in their domestic courses and practicums.
Furthermore, through the pedagogical exchange of ideas, the host teachers are also found to benefit. The authors recommend that teaching abroad opportunities be included in initial teacher education (ITE) programmes and that host teachers’ professional learning are considered in their development.
Published: 2021
Updated: Jul. 28, 2021
9
This study utilised institutional ethnography to inquire into the lived experiences of 15 Australian pre-service teachers (PSTs) who completed an international professional experience in Indonesia.
The PSTs were privy to a unique cultural experience, one grounded in an epistemological stance that differed considerably from their own.
Despite completing substantial pre-service teacher education coursework prior to travelling to Indonesia, the PSTs became more acutely aware of how school students, teachers, and community members may operate from varied ways of knowing.
As such, in this article the authors argue that international professional experiences have the possibility to guide PSTs towards newer and deeper explorations of epistemologies, a process of paramount importance in preparing future teachers to work effectively and appropriately in diverse classrooms.
Published: 2021
Updated: Jul. 28, 2021
10
This article reports on a mixed-methods study investigating teacher educators’ views on their role in preparing future teachers to work effectively with multilingual children.
A survey was conducted with 62 teacher educators who have responsibility for inclusion or English as an Additional Language (EAL) teacher training, which was followed up with a series of semi-structured interviews.
Key findings suggest that there may be a mismatch between the perceptions of teacher educators and newly qualified teachers, as the vast majority of the participants reported that they were either confident or very confident about teaching student teachers how to teach EAL children.
Additional themes explored were related to concerns over a performativity culture in education, and to balancing linguistic diversity training alongside other pressing priorities in initial teacher education.
Published: 2021
Updated: Jul. 27, 2021