Educative Power of Sociology in Multicultural Competences for Young Generation: Promoting Learning Outcomes of Connecting to the Immigrant Females

• In Event: Empowerment and Social Justice

Proposal

Research Backgrounds
According to the United Nations, there are currently 175 million people who have left their birth countries to live and stay in the other country. The reasons to immigrate are various, for example, naturalization immigrants and long-term residency, short-term migration for work and education, illegal migration, human trafficking, refugees seeking asylum, etc. Human beings are now experiencing an unprecedented trend of the "collective migration" stage.
The formation of marriage immigration in Taiwan is one of the struggles toward the global capitalist system. In the late 20th century, some men with lower social status in Taiwan encountered difficulties in finding wives. As a result, this group of men sought spouses from less economically developed countries, leading to an increase in female immigrants from mainland China and Southeast Asian countries. The internationalization of commercial marriages often results from the significant economic development gap between the two countries of origin and destination. For example, some immigrant women come to marry and live in Taiwan. It can be said that the social movement of international female migrations imply that the decision-making women’s marriage mobility is unequal, and it also evokes the critical issue of minority’s human rights in a mainstream society.

Research Questions and Issues
It is worth noting that besides advocating for the protest by the minorities and that a mature multicultural society depends on the awareness and progress of the majority. In particular, undergraduates are the intellectuals of the future society, and the improvement of their multicultural competencies cannot be ignored.
The important learning purpose for undergraduates is to develop equal relationships with ethnic minorities and groups. Previous related literature has pointed out the progress and difficulties of multicultural competency curriculum and pedagogy in undergraduate learning outcomes. In other words, what can be done for undergraduates to acquire knowledge and take action to correctly respect and interact with new immigrant women during the learning process? Such issues involve both individual experience and choices, as well as the value of the overall social structure change and evolution. One of the important responsibilities of higher education is to inspire the young generation of mainstream society to show multicultural cognition, attitude, and action through social practice experiences in the curriculum.

Research Purposes
The research purpose is presented as follows:
A. Use natural language processing programs to analyze the overall learning themes and content accumulated by undergraduates through the learning process of multicultural courses.
B. Adopt mind maps to depict the learning performances of individual undergraduates’ progress in learning at the beginning and end of the semester.
C. Conduct a questionnaire survey to explore the performance and differences of undergraduates' multicultural literacy at the beginning of the semester and after the semester.
D. Explore document analysis to analyze the opinions and reflections of undergraduates on multicultural literacy through their learning experience with practical social contacts.

Design/methodology/approach
The research processes, data collection and processing were shown as follows.
A. method of interview
The interview topics include: a. In terms of knowledge, what were the learning contents of the knowledge and viewpoints of multicultural competences? b. In terms of experience and behavior, what were the participation and experience of direct dialogue with new immigrant women?
Method of document analysis
This action research investigated all the collected documents, including: (1) From teachers: teaching design materials, teaching resources, teaching design checklists, teaching observation, and teaching reflection records...etc.; (2) From undergraduates: learning feedback sheets, homework, term reports, final exams, practical projects, and reflections, etc.
B. method of questionnaire survey
The researcher adopted the Banks' cross-cultural knowledge questionnaire to develop the testing items of this research. The researcher input the data and analyzed it with SPSS statistical software. The statistical methods were the mean, standard deviation, t test and analysis of variance (ANOVA).


Findings and Results
A. Constructing learners' knowledge and understanding of multiculturalism: learners can explain the concept and phenomena of multiculturalism. At the same time, learners learn to reflect on the social risks and costs that may arise from violating multiculturalism. Learners can understand the issues of education, and economic and cultural rights protection for minority or underprivileged groups in a multicultural society, and further construct their reflective perspectives.
B. Enhance learners' respect and acceptance towards multiculturalism: Through meaningful social practices, learners can deeply collect, analyze, act, and represent the experiences and situations of immigrant women in real social issues. This can help learners to judge and learn, from specific life contexts, how to maintain a respectful and accepting attitude towards diversity and differences in complex multicultural societies as well as implement active citizen thinking and actions.
C. Providing learners with experiences in social action: The planning and implementation of this teaching practice can effectively provide learners with experiences in multicultural learning. Through the arrangement or participation in related curriculum activities, learners can enhance their learning experiences on multicultural issues, making the teaching practice more socially beneficial and operationally dynamic.
D. Shaping learners' awareness of social care: Cultivating learners' caring for a multicultural society and guiding undergraduates to understand differences or other cultures through this course. Learners can empathize and embrace disadvantaged or minority groups, and consciously learn the importance of respecting differences and empathizing with vulnerable groups by implementing daily practices of civic responsibility and social justice.

Suggestions and Reflections
A. By means of the research process of teaching practice, social theory and policy are integrated into university courses and teaching, which is beneficial to enhancing teachers' and learners' choices and reflections on social action.
B. Through the design and implementation of multiple rich teaching units and the introduction of innovative teaching practices, this approach constructs a higher education curriculum learning environment and resources that promote the growth of teachers and students together. This approach also promotes the public connection and social impact of educational institutions.
C. Exploring teaching practice and learning outcomes of multiculturalism can effectively test sociological theories and guide the new generation to recognize the importance of developing a multicultural society and actively participate in it.

Author

• Amy Shumin Shumin Chen, National Tsing Hua University Taiwan