ERIC Number: EJ1045844
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014
Pages: 7
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1068-3844
EISSN: N/A
Pre-Service Teachers Confronting Issues of Diversity through a Radical Field Experience
Miller, Paul Chamness; Mikulec, Erin A.
Multicultural Education, v21 n2 p18-24 Win 2014
One of the major challenges in preparing pre-service teachers for the 21st-century classroom, as well as for an increasingly competitive job market, is providing the necessary skills and background to effectively educate diverse populations of students (Sleeter, 2001). Multicultural education courses are a staple in teacher preparation programs, where the differences in learners is superficially examined. However, as Goggins II and Dowcett (2011) point out, those basic multicultural education courses do not go into the depth of specific populations required to truly gain an understanding of issues related to power, privilege, and professional practice. Coffey (2010) asserts that the best way to authentically examine these issues is through cross-cultural, community-based field experiences. The study undertaken by the authors and described in this article advances the understanding of how to develop culturally responsive teachers through a critical examination of an immersion field experience in a particularly unique school environment where issues of sexual, racial/ethnic, and socio-economic diversity are addressed through progressive approaches. The authors point out that even more significant is the fact that these pre-service teachers are immersed in an educational context that is radically different from what they have known in their own schooling. This immersion experience compels them to come face-to-face with social injustices that they have read about in isolated readings, but that, in the study, they encounter collectively in a single school setting.
Descriptors: Preservice Teachers, Teacher Education, Student Diversity, Multicultural Education, Cross Cultural Training, Cultural Awareness, Teaching Methods, Educational Environment, Socioeconomic Status, Sexual Orientation, Race, Ethnicity, Power Structure, Field Experience Programs, Guidelines, Disadvantaged, Phenomenology, Questionnaires
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A