Education that is Multicultural and the Relationship between Preservice Campus Learning and Field Experiences

Teacher beliefs and cultural models: A challenge for science teacher preparation programs

“…There is preponderance of evidence that this approach helps students to remain encapsulated in their values, beliefs, and attitudes because students are not required to examine their beliefs and assumptions. Furthermore, few science teacher educators themselves have had experience teaching students who are culturally different (Atwater, Crockett, & Freeman, 2001;Bennett, Okinaka, & Xio-Yang, 1988;Grant & Koskella, 1986;McDiarmid & Price, 1990;Reed, 1993;Sleeter, 1988;Thomson, Wilder, & Atwater, 2001). For changes to occur, both preservice science teachers and teacher educators must gain experiences teaching and learning in multicultural settings-experiences that challenge them to confront, examine, refine, and sometimes change their beliefs and attitudes (Thomson, Wilder, & Atwater, 2001).…”

Preparing teachers for diversity : a study of two university teacher education programs in Indiana.

“…Although NeATE has included multicultural criteria in its standards for more than twenty years, many teacher education programs have done little, if anything, to include diversity content in teacher preparation programs, as reported by Grant (1981), Grant and Koskela (1986), and Huerta (1999). As Grant suggested, it may be that the practice of many current teachers in the public schools reflects the reluctance of teacher preparation programs to implement pluralistic concepts and methodology.…”

“…Preservice teachers reported that the focus of much course content that purported to be multicultural instead concerned only the narrow topic of examining texts and other instructional materials for bias (Grant, 1981;Grant & Koskela, 1986). The major issues of race, gender, and social class were seldom a part of their teacher education courses.…”

“…Field placements for observation and student teaching seem to be particularly helpful (Grant & Koskela, 1986;Paccione, 2000;Kai et al, 2001;Capella-Santana, 2003.) The literature indicates that increasing preservice teacher experiences with diversity through appropriate field placements along with structuring teacher education courses to include significant multicultural content would appear to help future teachers prepare for classroom success with a wide variety of students.…”

“…Otoya-Knapp (2001) The literature shows that required courses in multicultural education, an indicator of institutional support for diversity, can and do affect the attitudes and actions of preservice teachers. However, researchers (Grant, 1981;Grant & Koskela, 1986) have found that the type of multicultural content included in coursework and the manner in which it is presented are key factors that determine to what extent completing such coursework impacts preservice teachers.…”