The Effect of Multicultural Education on Preservice Teachers’ Attitude and Efficacy: Testing Bank’s Content Integration Dimension

Mustafa Öztürk Akcaoğlu,Zeki Arsal

doi:10.17275/per.22.44.9.2

Mustafa Öztürk Akcaoğlu, Zeki Arsal

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.17275/per.22.44.9.2

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Abstract

The sudden increase in diversity in the public schools has caught teacher preparation institutions unprepared. The situation has led to a need to develop instructional interventions to help pre-service teachers get ready for a new context that they will be facing for the first time. Multicultural education can be of great importance to address the issues related to diversities. In order to create multicultural environments at schools, all the actors of the educational area need skills to better communicate with students from different cultures. One of the most important topics during the teacher training process is equipping the pre-service teachers with the necessary skills, attitudes, and information to teach in multicultural environments. To this end, designing a teacher-training curriculum to raise pre-service teachers' multicultural efficacy levels is essential. In this quasi-experimental study, we investigated the effects of a 10-week multicultural education intervention carried out through Bank’s content integration process. Fifty-two pre-service teachers enrolled at the department of social sciences in a state university in Turkey participated in the study. Findings indicated a statistically significant difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the pre-service teachers in the experimental group, who attended the 10-week course, in terms of their multicultural attitude and efficacy. It was concluded that the multicultural education intervention, carried out according to Bank's content integration dimension, significantly affected pre-service teachers' multicultural attitude and efficacy

Highlights

The civil war, started in Syria in 2011, signaled the beginning of an era of unrest for the neighboring countries, especially after nearly 5 million Syrian citizens migrated because of the safety of life
The current study aims at contributing to the literature by seeking to understand the effect of a multicultural intervention carried out through content integration on social sciences pre-service teachers' multicultural efficacy and attitude
To find out if there was a significant difference within the groups in terms of multicultural attitude and efficacy based on the participants' pre-test / post-test scores, a paired samples t-test was conducted

Summary

Introduction

The civil war, started in Syria in 2011, signaled the beginning of an era of unrest for the neighboring countries, especially after nearly 5 million Syrian citizens migrated because of the safety of life. Given the large body of evidence pointing to increasing diversity, it is imperative that educational institutions work to decrease potential cultural misunderstandings and help establish a more welcoming atmosphere for international students at their institutions. To this end, understanding multicultural education and training the pre-service teachers, who will be responsible for the creation of multicultural spaces, are of great significance. The current study aims at contributing to the literature by seeking to understand the effect of a multicultural intervention carried out through content integration on social sciences pre-service teachers' multicultural efficacy and attitude

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Discussion

Conclusion