Preparing Early Childhood Special Educators to Serve Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Children and Families: Can a Multicultural Education Course Make a Difference?
Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online October, 2004
Preparing Early Childhood Special Educators to Serve Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Children and Families: Can a Multicultural Education Course Make a Difference?
There is no doubt that today's schools are faced with the challenge of educating an increasingly diverse school population. More teacher education programs address these challenges by adding courses in multicultural education and/or infusing content on teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students into the existing curriculum. This investigation reports on the changes in concepts and beliefs of 45 preservice teachers enrolled in a 17-week unified early childhood/special education multicultural education course. The course consisted of topics related to teaching students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Instructors used a variety of pedagogical strategies in the course including small group activities, case study illustrations, videotapes, thematic unit instruction, and traditional large group lectures. Students were asked to draw concept maps on “multicultural education” and write explanatory paragraphs on the first and last day of the course. Conceptual and belief changes were found in both the concept maps and supporting paragraphs.
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