Examination of teachers' perceptions of multicultural education

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the multicultural education perceptions of teachers working in secondary and high schools. Participants of this research designed with phenomenological approach, which is one of the qualitative research methods are 12 teachers working in secondary and high schools. Data was collected through the interview method in which a semi-structured interview form was used. Content analyzes were performed on the collected data and congruity ratios were calculated (0.83) between coders for the encodings performed separately by the researchers. Results indicate that the teachers most frequently define multicultural education as "training which is appropriate to different cultural values". When the definitions of multicultural education were examined, it was deduced that teachers focused on race, ethnicity, language, religion or social class dimensions of multiculturalism whereas, they did not think age, gender, disability, sexual orientation dimensions as the scope of the of multiculturalism. The teachers also expressed that they implemented multicultural education by "creating a culturally sensitive classroom environment" and "culturally sensitive teaching". The teachers stated that the primary advantage of multicultural education practices was the students' development of cultural sensitivity while the most important obstacle they faced in multicultural education practices was "undesirable student behaviors". At the end, it was concluded that teachers need to get a comprehensive education on multicultural education.

Prospective Teachers' Personal Characteristics to Multicultural Education

“…It can be interpreted as a result, educators have well attitude and improvable personal characteristics. Otherwise there are some research pointed out that teachers and prospective teachers should be trained on multiculturalism in the education [7]; [22]; [26]; [28]; [36]; [37]; [42]; [48]. t-test was used to determine whether personal characteristics to multicultural education changes according to the gender of the prospective teachers.…”

The Metaphors of Secondary School Teachers Towards the Concept of “Multiculturalism”

“…In Mapuranga and Bukaliya's study (2014), most of the teachers stated that they were performing practices for multicultural education. In the study by Başarır, Sarı and Çetin (2014), teachers put forward that they were practicing multicultural education in their classes and that education was proper to different cultures and ensured the principle for equality of opportunity. Also, in this research, the concept of multiculturalism participants evaluated the terms of equality of opportunity, and it has been emphasized that differences should be enjoyed and experienced by everyone equally.…”

Multicultural education in Turkey: An analysis of 1st-5th grades curriculum objectives

“…Türkiye'de çok kültürlü eğitim ile ilgili çalışmalar çok kültürlülüğün ve çok kültürlü eğitimin algılanma biçimi (Arslan 2009;Başarır, Sarı & Çetin, 2014;Seyfi 2006), tutum (Damgacı & Aydın 2013;Toprak 2008), çok kültürlü kişilik özellikleri (Polat, 2008), öğretmenlerin farklılıkları idare etme biçimi (Esen 2009) ve kazanımlarda ve kitaplarda çok kültürlü eğitimin varlığı (Cırık 2008(Cırık , 2014Korkmaz 2009) olarak gruplanabilir. Bu çalışmaların ortak sonuçlarına göre Türkiye'deki mevcut Milli Eğitim politikalarının ve geliştirilmiş ilköğretim ders programlarının temelinde çok kültürlü eğitim ilke ve yaklaşımının olmamasının, öğretmen, öğrenci ve okul kültürüne dâhil bireyler açısından eksiklik ve çok kültürlülük, farklılıklara saygı ve farklılıkların eğitim-öğretim ortamlarında kullanılması açısından zorluk yarattığı ortaya çıkmıştır.…”

“…The focus of existing studies are about how multicultural education is perceived (Arslan, 2009;Başarır, et al, 2014;Seyfi, 2006), attitudes toward multicultural education (Damgacı & Aydın 2003;Toprak, 2008), multicultural personality (Polat, 2008), dealing with difference in the absence of multicultural education (Esen, 2009) and multicultural principles in programs and books (Cırık, 2008(Cırık, , 2014Korkmaz, 2009). …”