Training future teachers to work in a multicultural environment

Abstract

The multicultural nature of the environment in which the modern educational process is carried out imposes on the teacher the obligation to be able to work with children of different ethnic groups, different beliefs, from different cultures. Since, in practice, most novice teachers are not ready for effective activity in a multicultural environment, the purpose of the research was to study training pedagogical students to work in a multicultural environment. In the research the following methods were used: analysis of pedagogical literature on the issue; pedagogical experiment (the one group pretest-post-test design); diagnostic techniques, including interviewing pedagogical undergraduate students, ranking of activities to train to work in a multicultural environment. The experiment involved junior students (I-II year) and senior students (IV-V year) of the South Ural State Humanitarian Pedagogical University, studying in the direction of “Pedagogical education (with two training profiles)”, where the second profile is English (84 respondents). After the pedagogical experiment, self-assessment of students' readiness to work in a multicultural environment improved: at the final stage of the experiment, on the basis of the sign test (G-criterion) at a significance level of 0.01, statistically significant differences were revealed between the pre-experimental and post-experimental values of self-esteem. The obtained empirical value of the criterion, equal to 7 (Gemp = 7), is less than the critical one (Gctit = 19), which indicates the transition of the group to a higher level of readiness to work in a multicultural environment. The preferences of the types of activity during the experiment changed: before the experiment, students chose the activity-based component of training, after the experiment they preferred information-based component. The results indicate that in order to train pedagogical students to work in a multicultural environment, a complex of activities, including both information-based and activity-based components of education, is to be applied. It was concluded that special attention should be paid to the study of the cultures of countries from which a vast number of migrants came to Russia, as well as to elements of conflictological education. The applied part of teacher training should include school-based experience in teaching classes with multicultural students.