Fostering Preservice Teachers’ Multicultural Competency: Deconstructing the Notion of Culturelessness

• In Event: Multicultural/Multiethnic Education: Perspectives on Teacher Education

Abstract

How does our worldview shape our expectations, interactions, and relationships with those different from us? This presentation reports on a study that examined the effects of a course on empowering preservice teachers to deconstruct the notion of culturelessness in order to construct an authentic cultural identity that fosters cultural competence—the ability to form authentic and effective relationships across differences. Through analyzing students’ pre-instructional assignment that revealed the notion of culturelessness and engagement in critical discourse and experiential learning, the study revealed students constructed new and deeper knowledge of culture, recognized own cultural socialization including beliefs and values, evolved an emerging cultural identity, and understanding of the centrality of culture and its relevancy in teaching and learning.

Author

• Omiunota N. Ukpokodu, University of Missouri - Kansas City