An Investigation of the Relationship between Prospective Teachers’ Attitudes towards Multiculturality and Refugee Students

Abstract

Multiculturalism refers to the existence of different social groups in society. Multiculturalism advocates a society in which no culture is dominant. Multiculturalism is a fact of life for many people. Multiculturalism and globalization affect how people organize the world around them and how they see themselves and others. Multicultural education offers an educational program that concerns not only specific minorities but also all social groups. Today, with the effect of globalization, teachers and students can participate in educational activities all over the world. This situation requires educators to approach multicultural education positively in order to ensure equality of opportunity in education. In this study, it is aimed to examine the relationship between prospective primary school teachers and pre-school teacher candidates’ attitudes towards multiculturalism and refugee students. The article summarizes the information on multicultural education, which is one of the reflections of globalization on education, and refugee students and equal opportunities in education. The research was carried out with the relational survey model, one of the quantitative research methods. In the study, it was determined that the sum of multicultural attitudes increased the general level of attitude towards refugee students. Another result of the research is that the sum of multicultural attitudes increases the level of communication, adaptation and efficiency. In the study, the communication scores of the preschool teaching department were also found to be higher than the communication scores of the primary school teaching department.