Cultural Diversity Awareness: Case Studies of American Teacher Candidates

• In Event: Lessons from teachers' professional development programmes

Proposal

How is the topic relevant to comparative and international education, sustainability, or a SIG?
This topic, how American teacher candidates learn about and implement ideas of cultural diversity awareness has relevance to comparative and international education because it provides a perspective of attempting to impact an area of privilege (the United States) and facilitate growth and development among preservice candidates toward the overall goal of inclusive and culturally sensitive approaches of teaching. The topic is relevant to the idea of sustainability because it examines the extent to which undergraduate experiences are sustainable over time. The topic is relevant to the Teacher Education and the Teaching Profession special interest group because it examines an approach to teacher education that is intended to broaden the perspective of undergraduate preservice teachers: Teacher demographics in the United States are typically female, middle class, white, and monolingual, which contrasts starkly with the population of students of color, which has grown by 10% in the past 12 years, and is predicted to continue growing in the coming decades. This study engages critically with the process of teacher preparation and the question of how to facilitate cultural diversity awareness among American educators by following and collecting data from a population that mirrors the national demographics of teachers. This study approaches teachers as learners, in the tradition of critically reflective practice, towards the goal of achieving personal transformation instead of carrying out the directive of the “multicultural education classroom”
What is the need or the problem that the program or intervention tries to address?
The purpose of this study is to examine how American teacher beliefs about cultural awareness and diversity change throughout their pre-service course experiences, teacher education program, and first year of teaching as an elementary, special education, or early childhood educator.
This study takes place is over the course of 3 years (2016-2019), and the authors implement mixed methodology across the phases. The setting in which this second phase takes place is in an undergraduate teacher preparation program in Early Childhood, Special Education, and Elementary Education teacher education programs in a mid-sized Midwest university in the United States. Early results (phase 1) in 2016 were promising, including demonstration of growth through Brookfield’s reflection framework, as American students reflected upon their experience with a Malaysian pen pal. Misconceptions and commonalities between the pre-service American teachers and members of the Malay class were uncovered by teacher candidates. Through their experience with their Malaysian pen pal, some students in the teacher education programs shifted their naïve (and sometimes negative) perspectives about students in other countries and specifically from the Muslim religion.
However, early results from Phase 2 indicate that this shift in perspective may be limited only to their experience with their Malaysian pen pal. Initial analysis of phase 2 data (interviews of students proceeding through their educator preparation program) indicates that students do not remember the previous experience as particularly meaningful or special when compared to other experiences in the program.
Phase 3’s focus is to follow these same students in the field (post-graduation), and interview them after they have worked for .5 to a full year. At the time of session presentation, all phases of data collection will have been analyzed and whole-study findings will be complete.
This study approaches teachers as learners, in the tradition of critically reflective practice, to achieve personal transformation instead of carrying out the directive of the “multicultural education classroom”
The main perspective of this paper could best be described as addressing the gap that is present in multicultural education (Willis and Meacham, 1997). Simply using multicultural education (any form of education or teaching that incorporates the histories, texts, values, beliefs, and perspectives of people from different cultural backgrounds” (edglossory.org, 3.6.2016)) as a pedagogical approach is insufficient.
By engaging teacher candidates in the hard work of personal transformation, and providing a meaningful experience in which they interact with peers of another culture, this study demonstrates that we, as teacher educators, can reach Samuels’ (2014) goal of multicultural preparedness.
Mezirow (1997) emphasizes that transformative learning is rooted in the way human beings communicate, and does not link it exclusively with significant life events of the learner. By providing pre-service teachers with a transformative experience in which they engage meaningfully and emotionally with a peer of another culture through discourse and personal reflection, these teacher candidates have demonstrated gains in skills including perspective, metacognition, and ‘big picture’ thinking.
What advice do you offer or do you seek at CIES, and how can it address similar challenges elsewhere?
I seek advice (networking and collaboration) at CIES from other researchers, conducting similar research in a variety of diverse geographic locations, specifically from those assigned to the same, or similar panels. I can offer advice on the process of this study and challenges faced during data collection.
What would you have done differently, knowing what you know now about the project or program?
For me, this study was an initial foray into this area of research. As I have progressed over the last three years, I have been exposed to many other resources that while along the way have been useful and helpful, but in the beginning, if I had been more experienced in the topic, I would have been able to delve deeper into the research.
What was the impact of the project on the problem it targeted? How was the project’s impact assessed?
The impact of the project was to increase direct instruction on cultural diversity awareness for students in a midsized, midwestern university. The project’s impact was assessed through mixed methods (pre and post survey data, emails to pen pals, critical reflections on communication with pen pals, and individual interviews) over the course of 3 years. While early findings (discussed earlier in the summary) have suggested a possible positive impact, full findings, discussed during the presentation, will reveal the ‘big picture’.

Authors

• Jessica S. Krim, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

• Susan Breck, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

• Elly Ong, Universiti Teknologi MARA