Examination of teachers' perceptions of multicultural education

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the multicultural education perceptions of teachers working in secondary and high schools. Participants of this research designed with phenomenological approach, which is one of the qualitative research methods are 12 teachers working in secondary and high schools. Data was collected through the interview method in which a semi-structured interview form was used. Content analyzes were performed on the collected data and congruity ratios were calculated (0.83) between coders for the encodings performed separately by the researchers. Results indicate that the teachers most frequently define multicultural education as "training which is appropriate to different cultural values". When the definitions of multicultural education were examined, it was deduced that teachers focused on race, ethnicity, language, religion or social class dimensions of multiculturalism whereas, they did not think age, gender, disability, sexual orientation dimensions as the scope of the of multiculturalism. The teachers also expressed that they implemented multicultural education by "creating a culturally sensitive classroom environment" and "culturally sensitive teaching". The teachers stated that the primary advantage of multicultural education practices was the students' development of cultural sensitivity while the most important obstacle they faced in multicultural education practices was "undesirable student behaviors". At the end, it was concluded that teachers need to get a comprehensive education on multicultural education.