Seeing Beyond: Improving Preservice Teachers' Cultural Competence and Interdisciplinary Writing Through Technology and Faculty Collaboration

• In Event: Poster Session 6
  In Poster Session: Multicultural/Multiethnic Education: Theory and Practice

Abstract

This paper presents a collaborative research project entitled Seeing Beyond. The title was borrowed from the book, The Giver, (Lowry, 1993) in which a young boy learns to “see beyond” the seemingly utopian, but colorless world he inhabits by opening his mind to the stored memories of others. In multimodal writing assignments, students learned to see beyond their own impressions of the world by reading the reflective memories and ideas of their classmates. The current research project, Seeing Beyond, builds on a previous study by bringing seven university faculty members together to design technology-supported writing experiences that cultivate students’ cultural competence through the exploration of diverse perspectives.

Authors

• Jennifer Jill Kidd, Old Dominion University

• Judith M Dunkerly-Bean, Old Dominion University