Enhancing Multicultural Teacher Education in China: Research from Comparative Case Studies

• In Event: Roundtable Group 4
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Comparative Dialogues of East Asian Higher Education and Multiculturalism

Proposal

China is a multi-ethnic, multilingual and multicultural country, with 56 nationalities, more than 80 spoken languages and about 30 written languages. With the process of globalization, industrialization, and urbanization, schools in China are experiencing the large influx of ethnic minority students. A large number of migrant minority students who are particularly from areas inhabited by the ethnic minority groups also enter the Han-culture dominant classrooms every year. The influence of an increasingly ethnically diverse population on the country’s schools is and will continue to be enormous. This paper examined current issues of educating culturally responsive teachers in the United States and in China. Focusing on constructing a culturally responsive knowledge base and model for teacher education programs, this paper summarized obstacles for developing culturally responsive teachers, proposed multicultural approaches to establish a culturally responsive teacher education model in multiethnic and multicultural China, as well as presented practical implications to enhance the knowledge construction for preparing teachers for diversity. Aiming at stimulating reconsiderations of situating teacher education programs in multicultural context, this paper brought culturally responsive perspectives to empower pre-service and in-service teachers’ teaching capacities to meet needs from their students with diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds in China.

Author

• Huanshu Yuan, Marshall University