Teaching in a Diverse Culture

Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate preservice students' awareness of cultural diversity during a required Introduction to Education course that includes a service learning component. As college students majoring in education, preservice teachers should be taught to acknowledge and appreciate cultural diversity. There are many White, middle and upper class students, mostly women, who are attracted to teaching at the K-12 level. However, many, if not most, of these students have limited experience in working with diverse student populations or their families. It is imperative that preservice teachers become "transformed" during their education so that they emerge more culturally aware and culturally competent to understand the changing demographics of schools. The Introduction to Education course which includes a service learning component acts as an intervention. Such an experience can serve to showcase the realities of teaching to students who may have a utopian view of teaching and begin to ground them in the realities of daily teaching responsibilities. This study was a mixed method research design with a convenience sample. Descriptive statistics, manual coding and NVivo (version 10) software were used to analyze the data. Participants included students enrolled in one section of a required course, Introduction to Education, in the College of Education in a southeastern university. Data collected over the course of the semester included questionnaires, the Multicultural Survey, and comments from focus groups. Research findings reveal that the service learning component of the Introduction to Education course had a positive impact on the respondent's awareness of cultural diversity. The emergent themes that the respondents indicated helped prepare them to be successful in a culturally diverse classroom were: classroom observations, observation guides, mentoring/tutoring and class activities. This research is significant to colleges of education as they seek to design effective teacher preparation programs.