Broadening Preservice Teachers' Understandings of Culture and Diversity. International Field Experience Project: Online Intercultural Exchange

• In Event: 49.088 - Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: 49.088-13 - Preservice Teacher Development in International Contexts

Abstract

Thirty-six pre-service teachers from the Freiburg University of Education, Germany (Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg [PH]) and a Penn State University campus (PS) participated in a multicultural group project entitled “The Importance of Diversity in Education” facilitated by a telecollaborative process. Participants used online intercultural exchange (OIE). Two weeks later the PS participants met their project partners in Germany and presented their group findings. Results from pre and post survey data strongly support prefacing face-to-face multicultural interactions using OIE to increase comfort and support academic multicultural tasks, modeling the use of technology to demonstrate cultural connectivity in an academic setting, and the use of the research topic as a project task to broaden participants’ understanding of culture and diversity.

Authors

• Jayne Melissa Leh, The Pennsylvania State University

• John Alfred Guiseppe, The Pennsylvania State University

• Maike Grau