Session Information
07 SES 10 A, Different Pathways to Social Justice and Inclusiveness in Education
Paper Session
Contribution
Although how to achieve democratic multicultural society through education has been under discussion in Europe for a long time (Portera, 2008), with the recent influxes of refugees to European countries, the willingness and competency of teachers to teach culturally, linguistically and religiously diverse classrooms has made the discussion hotter.
While the change in the demographics of classrooms is not a problem itself, the problem lies in how teachers respond to that change especially when there is a mismatch between teachers’ and students’ backgrounds (Brown, 2007). In literature, cultural disequilibrium between teacher and student is considered as restlessness. According to Irvine (2001), students bring to school their cultural values and try to become a part of the school culture. In case of a mismatch between teacher culture and student’s culture, miscommunication occurs and students cannot be a part of the school culture. When students cannot be a part of the school culture, alienation and conflicts may arise. On the other hand, teachers may label students from diverse cultural backgrounds as lacking certain language skills, motivation or family support (Dolby, 2012) and teachers may asses their students’ academic performance according to their own assumptions, biases and prejudices.
To diminish the effect of cultural gap between teachers and students, multicultural teacher competences are needed. However, as Banks (2001) suggests, one of the first milestones of multicultural competence should be asking for self-recognition. Asking about own beliefs helps to deepen the understanding about how cultural knowledge is important and to identify own biases, positive and negative attitudes or self-efficacy for multicultural education (Grant & Gillette, 2006). Also, it is known that teachers' attitudes to cultural diversity are important determinants of learning outcomes of ethnically diverse students (Gay, 2002). Hence, in this study, I draw on the self-reports of teachers to explore their attitudes, ideas and beliefs for teaching in culturally diverse classrooms.
This qualitative study was conducted in Vienna with native Austrian middle school teachers who work in schools with a high number of immigrant students. With its mainly middle class native Austrian teacher force, Austria’s student population’s 22.2 % is construed by students with migration background in 2015, while this ratio is 47.5% in capital city, Vienna (Statistik Austria, 2015). Being among the top multicultural cities across Europe, Vienna is already one of the multicultural European cities where teachers are likely to teach in a class populated with different cultures than their own culture. As a result of its multicultural structure, the country is confronted with cultural gap between teachers and students especially in Vienna; however the topic of teachers’ competences for intercultural or multicultural education is researched in a limited way (Luciak & Khan-Svik, 2008). In this study, teachers who are teaching in “new middle schools” with a high number of students with migration background were included as data sources. New middle schools are comprehensive Austrian schools that were launched in 2012 upon a school reform which aims to form an inclusive school for all and to diminish the marginalizing effect of attending an academic or a non-academic secondary school.
The study asked the self-reports for own strengths and needs and challenges to teach culturally diverse classrooms. On the other hand, the study collected suggestions from teachers about what teacher education programs should include in their agenda to prepare teachers for culturally diverse classrooms. The research questions were;
- How do teachers perceive their strengths, needs and challenges with regard to teaching in culturally diverse classrooms?
- What are the teachers’ suggestions to teacher education programs with regard to preparing teachers for culturally diverse classrooms?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Austrian Statistic Institute (2015). School and school visit. Retrieved from http://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/menschen_und_gesellschaft/bildung_und_kultur/formales_bildungswesen/schulen_schulbesuch/index.html Banks, J. A. (2001). Citizenship, education and diversity, Implications for teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 52(1), 5-16. Brown, M.R. (2007). Educating all students: Creating culturally responsive teachers, classrooms, and schools. Intervention in School and Clinic, 43 (1), 57-61. Dolby, N. (2012). Rethinking multicultural education for the next generation. New York: Routledge. Franken, J. K., & Wallen, N. E. (2006). How to design and evaluate research in Education. New York: McGraw Hill. Gay, G. (2002) Culturally responsive teaching in special education for ethnically diverse students: Setting the stage, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 15 (6), 613-629, DOI: 10.1080/0951839022000014349 Irvine, J.J. (2001). The critical elements of culturally responsive pedagogy: A synthesis of the research. In J. Irvine, B. Armento, V. Causey, J. Jones, R. Frasher, M. Weinburgh (Eds.), Culturally responsive teaching: Lesson planning for elementary and middle grades (pp. 2-17). New York: McGraw-Hill. Lombard, M., Snyder-Duch, J., & Bracken, C.C. (2004). Practical Resources for Assessing and Reporting Intercoder Reliability in Content Analysis Research Projects. School of Media and Communication, Temple University. Retrieved from http://ils.indiana.edu/faculty/hrosenba/www/Research/methods/lombard_reliability.pdf Luciak, M. (2009). Behinderung oder benachteiligung? SWS-Rundschau, 49 (3), 369-390. Luciak, M., & Khan‐Svik, G. (2008) Intercultural education and intercultural learning in Austria – critical reflections on theory and practice, Intercultural Education, 19 (6), 493-504, DOI:10.1080/14675980802568285 Portera, A. (2008). Intercultural education in Europe: epistemological and semantic aspects. Intercultural Education, 19 (6), 481-491. Retrieved from http://euc.illinois.edu/5C/eucdw2011/documents/PorteraInterculturalEdinEurope.pdf
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