A Closer Look at Multicultural Education Courses: Implications for Preparation of Elementary Teachers

Author(s):

Zeynel Amac(presenting / submitting)Ismail Hakan Akgun(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 14 B,

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-11

15:30-17:00

Room:

208.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Smadar Galili

Contribution

Our society is getting more diverse and students from different backgrounds enter school settings every day (National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) (2010). Because there is diverse student population and teachers of those students mostly belong to White middle class, cultural misunderstandings are increasingly, likely. Preparing future teachers to respond appropriately to culturally diverse student bodies is crucial.

Although many universities in the world require courses in multicultural education, the extent to which these courses effectively prepare students for diverse classrooms has not been well-researched. Only a few studies have attempted to understand the nature of diversity courses (e.g. Locke, 1997), and influences of these courses on student teachers’ perspectives (e.g. Brown, 2004).

Pre-service teachers come to teacher education programs to be equipped with the knowledge, values, and skills necessary to become teachers. The curriculum of teacher education program they enroll in designed to first give some background knowledge about learning and teaching then practice what they learn. In addition to these, teacher education programs devoted to multicultural ideals add courses, extracurricular activities to their curriculum to prepare teachers for diverse learners. They are expected to learn more about diversity, multicultural education, and how to act/teach accordingly. In the teacher education program this study was conducted have these features to better educate prospective teachers for real classrooms where diversity is a fact. E300 diversity course is a requirement for all elementary education majors so that they would have some basic information about multicultural education. This course is also designed to give some strategies about how to approach diverse learners (Zeichner, 1996).

The main research questions that guided this study are as follows:

a) What is the nature of the multicultural education course?

b) What do a group of pre-service teachers who have taken this course think about multicultural education?

Method

The diversity course consists of at least eight different sections. The participants are four white middle class female students, one white middle class male student, and a middle aged African American female, the instructor of the course. Two methods of data collection were utilized in this study: face-to-face interviews and document analysis. In qualitative research, interviews are commonly regarded as an effective means for collecting data, as they provide researchers with the opportunity to learn what is “in and on someone else’s mind” (Patton, 2002, p. 341). Document collection is another means for gathering data in qualitative research; according to Yin (2003), documents “can provide other specific details to corroborate information from other sources” (p. 87), and “play an explicit role in any data collection in doing case studies” (p. 87). Patton (2002) underscores the importance of documents and states that they provide “information about many things that cannot be observed” (p. 293). The interview tapes were transcribed verbatim concurrently throughout the data collection process. After the transcription, the data were analyzed in terms of their sameness and uniqueness by reading the transcripts or notes several times. By doing this, it was possible to identify a number of themes related to diversity. As mentioned previously, the pre-service teachers’ lesson plans, assignments, and artifacts were collected, in addition to the syllabi for the multicultural education course. To analyze the data, elements related to the goals of multicultural education were sought through an iterative process. Trustworthiness is always a matter of concern in qualitative research; in a qualitative study, a variety of methods may be used to confirm the credibility of the findings. According to Merriam (2001), researchers can use strategies such as triangulation, member checks, and peer examination. Accordingly, information collected from each of the participants was compared with the others, and interpretations were made based on the common opinions. In reporting the data, the participants’ voices, where appropriate, were directly quoted for the reader to make his/her own judgments. Conflicts, if any existed, were specifically brought to the readers’ attention, also by direct quotes where appropriate.

Expected Outcomes

Around the concept of multicultural education course, following themes emerged: a. Organizational problems of the course, b. Lack of correlation among the multicultural education and other courses c. Effects of multicultural education course on pre-service teachers’ perspectives about working with diverse backgrounds Detailed findings will be shared with the audience during the conference. The findings of our study should be useful for teacher educators who would like to improve the multicultural preparation of pre-service teachers and multicultural experiences in the teacher education programs. The society in EU countries becomes increasingly varied; students and their families are also diverse. This study will be beneficial for teacher educators in the EU for the following reasons: 1. Preparing teachers for diverse student backgrounds and their families is an important issue both in the US and in the EU. 2. The European Commission (2010) gives importance to educating people for multicultural ideals and suggests that “teachers should be able to work with and in society.” It also underscores the importance of encouraging intercultural respect and understanding, the balance between respecting and being aware of the diversity of learners’ cultures and identifying common values” (p. 3).

References

Brown, E. L. (2004). What precipitates change in cultural diversity awareness during a multicultural course: The message or the method? Journal of Teacher Education, 55(4), 325-340. doi: 10.1177/0022487104266746 European Commission (2010). Common European principles for teacher competences and qualifications. Retrieved from http://www.atee1.org/uploads/EUpolicies/common_eur_principles_en.pdf Locke, S. (1997). Teaching teachers in a pluralistic society: Mixing up a new tossed salad (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. (UMI No. 9805356) Merriam, S. B. (2001). Qualitative research and case study applications in education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES). (2010). Participation in education. Retrieved August 10, 2014, from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2010/section1/table-1er-1.asp Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (3rd ed). Thousand oaks, CA: SAGE. Zeichner, K. M. (1996). Educating teachers for cultural diversity. In K. Zeichner, S. Melnick, & M. L. Gomez (eds.). Currents of reform in preservice teacher education (pp. 176-198). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Author Information

Zeynel Amac (presenting / submitting)

Kilis 7 Aralık University, Turkey

Ismail Hakan Akgun (presenting)

Adiyaman University, Turkey

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