Preservice Teacher Acquisition of a Critical Multicultural and Global Perspective: A Reform Path with Ideological Tensions.

Overview & Synopsis

This paper reports on a study that examined the thinking of 49 elementary and secondary education student teachers who had completed a curriculum based on a teacher reflection conceptual framework. To investigate the relationship between students' actions and their ideologies (understood as pervasive belief systems and knowledge bases) when incorporating multicultural and global education content, student teacher self-evaluation forms for multicultural education and global education were analyzed. Overall, results suggested that the majority of the sample leaned toward the conservative end of the multicultural spectrum rather than toward a critical multiculturalism necessary for transformative reform of the school curriculum. In terms of global education, 45 percent of the subjects cited an understanding of global education as learning about the interconnection between natural and human systems in the world; 25 percent focused their attention on such issues as conflict, hunger, and environmental pollution, 16 percent on the natural environment, and 14 percent on issues pertaining to other nations and cultures. Survey results showed consistency in student teachers' ideological perspectives on multicultural education and their actions in implementing multicultural content into the curriculum. The data in this study suggested that reflective teacher education programs at their current stage of development may be failing to overcome dominant ahistorical conservative and liberal multicultural ideologies for the majority of their candidates. Programs concerned about critical multicultural and global education may need to create long-term networks for exchanging curricular information on efforts and techniques seeking to overcome dominant ideologies. (Contains 31 references.) (ND)