A Study of Integrating Multicultural Education into Primary English Based on Multicultural Children’s Literature: Focusing on Pre-service Teacher Education

Abstract

Objectives This study is to examine the effects of multicultural pre-service teacher training for the integration of multicultural and English education. It aims to study how intensive teacher training affects teaching strategies utilizing multicultural children’s literature and teachers’ multicultural attitude. It also investigates positive and negative factors in applying what they have learned from teacher training to educational contexts. Methods Mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative research methods were adopted. Attitude toward ract/ethnic diversity, multicultural understanding and attitude, English reading and writing ability were analyzed by utilizing SPSS/PC+ 21.0, and teaching journals, work samples, and interview data were also examined through phenomenological research method. Results The findings of quantitative data analysis using t-test showed that multicultural education using children’s literature positively affected both teachers’ and students’ multicultural attitude. The differences were statistically significant. Through the teacher training, per-service teachers could understand how to utilize multicultural children’s literature using culturally responsive pedagogy and how to integrate English and multicultural education. In the teaching contexts, using multicultural picture books had positive impacts on understanding diverse cultures, and positively affected students’ English reading and writing ability. Engaging with multicultural picture books gave students the opportunities to actively participate in the lessons. On the other hand, there were cases where students won’t accept different perspectives about other cultures. Some pre-service teachers also pointed out that meeting with multicultural students in the real world would be integrated into the teacher education program. Conclusions This study addressed not only the positive impacts of teacher training on implementing English and multicultural education utilizing multicultural children’s literature, but also challenges in implementing multicultural education in educational contexts.