Multiculturalism: Are pre-service ELT teachers ready for it?1

Journal of Modern Science tom 2/37/2018 Abstract The aim of this study is to investigate pre-service ELT teacher’s awareness of and attitudes towards multicultural teaching and learning. This qualitative study employs survey method and the data was collected through the shortened version of “Preservice Teachers’ Attitudes about and Awareness of Multicultural Teaching and Learning Scale” which includes 18 items in three subdimensions, namely awareness of multicultural issues, the effect of professional courses on dealing with multicultural approaches to education and interest in additional training in multicultural approaches to education. The participants as pre-service ELT teachers are commonly aware of multicultural issues in schools. It can be seen that the student-teachers escape facing cultural diversity despite training provided by the university. However, the results show that the participants are eager to receive further training in multicultural education. This can be related to the gap between theory and practice in which students may not be taught what is required in the field.


Introduction
Multiculturalism has been used as an umbrella term to characterize the moral and political claims of a wide range of marginalized groups, including African Americans, women, LgBT people, and people with disabilities (glazer 1997, Hollinger 1995, Taylor 1992; as cited in Song, 2016).However, contemporary theories of multiculturalism, which originated in the late 1980s and early 1990s, tend to focus their arguments on immigrants who are ethnic and religious minorities (e.g.Latinos in the U.S., Muslims in Western Europe), minority nations (e.g.Catalans, Basque, Welsh, Québécois), and indigenous peoples (e.g.native peoples in north America, Australia, and new zealand).recently, Turkey has become a host of many cultural diverse identities.Especially with the inflow of Syrian refugees, teachers have started to confront multicultural issues in learning environments more often.Emin (2016) states in his study that Turkey hosts over 2.5 million Syrians of which 625.000 are in need of basic education.In order to tackle these multicultural difficulties especially in public schools, pre-service teachers have to be trained accordingly.However, pre-service teachers trained at universities are not given trainings on multiculturalism which they might confront later in their teaching career where they have to teach culturally different groups of students.Therefore, this study focuses on pre-service ELT teachers' awareness and attitudes towards multicultural learning and teaching.In this respect, the following research questions will guide the study: 1. What are pre-service ELT teachers' awareness level of multiculturalism in education?2. According to pre-service ELT teachers, how adequate is their education in terms of multiculturalism in education?3. How willing are the pre-service ELT teachers to receive more training on multiculturalism in education?

Review of the Literature
Multiculturalism has become much more prevalent in todays globalised world which results in people migrating from one country to another due to variety of reasons such as wars, trade, education, etc.As a result, the number of monocultural countries is scarcely any.Thus, the number of challenges surrounding multicultural education has increased because of the impact of the monocultural educational policies which ignores multiculturalism and multicultural issues.In this regard, gibson (2004) stated that most teachers who come from monocultural areas are facing communication problems especially in meaningful interactions with culturally different groups.Although multiculturalism is a trendy topic in education today, the courses on multiculturalism and multiculturalist education provided by the teacher training programs are quite a few and those few programs providing courses only in theory lacking practical applications of multiculturalism.As a result, recent studies presented that novice teachers are not competent enough to deal with the challenges and problems posed by multicultural education.Barry & Lechner (1995) conducted a study on awareness of multicultural teaching and learning with the participation of 73 pre-service teachers and they concluded that while most of the respondents are aware of issues concerning multicultural education, they are undecided about how to communicate with children and families from culturally diverse backgrounds and teach them.Therefore, multicultural training is highly required not only theoretically but also with practice in the field.Similarly, goodwin (1994) stated that pre-service teachers are unsure of conceptualizing multicultural education as they lack equipping their students with the skills, attitudes, materials, content and instructional practices that will enable them to teach a group of children from a diverse cultural and ethnic background.Although multicultural trainings at universities are given to pre-service teachers, no further instructions are given despite the positive effect on teacher-students (Bennett, 1989).In this respect, multicultural training should proceed along with the period of study enabling students to gain theoretical knowledge applicable in the field.Besides, these educational trainings should ensure that students appreciate their cultural differences (Clark, 2010).Additionally, teacher training programs including multicultural training should embody a clear framework and objectives enhancing not only students' but also teachers' awareness of multiculturalism and bridge the gap between theory and practice providing students to witness realistic multicultural issues in public schools.According to the study of Bhargava et al. (2004) and Bustamante et al. (2009), educators struggle defining to promote multiculturalism in learning environments due to the fact that they have a lack of cultural awareness and limited intellection of how cultural differences may affect school practices.This limited understanding has been related to the biases of the educators and negative perceptions towards the practice of multicultural education (Alviar-Martin & Ho, 2011;Luther, 2009).In respect thereof, multicultural training is not necessary just for students but also for educators whose own notion of multiculturalism is created mentally in students' minds.As seen in nelson and guerra (2013), educators' attitudes towards multicultural education are highly affected by their own limited cultural awareness and the unwillingness to work with culturally diverse students.Usually, educators who come from a monocultural background tend to have limited knowledge about the cultural traditions, values, and beliefs of their students (Cicchelli & Cho, 2007).Therefore, they have inconvenience emphasizing with the cultural realities available in their classrooms (Schoorman & Bogotch, 2010).In this regard, enhancing teacher's awareness of multiculturalism and administering them to consider their own near-by multicultural environment will provide to compare theory and practice of multicultural issues available and will contribute to further multicultural training programs.

Methodology
The study employed quantitative design and survey method that is generally used to measure or evaluate the general characteristics of a topic, universe or program (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2007) to investigate pre-service ELT teacher's awareness of and attitudes towards multicultural teaching and learning which was conducted at Aksaray University, Faculty of Education, ELT Department, Turkey with the participation of approximately 120 Turkish EFL pre-service English language teachers who were conveniently available during an available course.The ages of pre-service teachers that participated in this study ranged between 19 and 23 which were chosen from all grades including students from the preparatory year.Due to the availability of foreign students at the university and the obligatory practicum for the senior students which takes place in different primary and secondary schools where also refugee pupils are available, opinions of pre-service ELT teachers were collected via a questionnaire during an available course.In this respect, to answer the research questions a descriptive analysis (frequencies) was used.A Likert-type of a 5-point questionnaire (see Appendix A) developed by nancy H. Barry & Judith V. Lechner (1995) was adopted to investigate pre-service ELT teachers' awareness of and attitudes towards multicultural teaching and learning.The adopted questionnaire includes 18 items divided into four parts which are respectively the demographic part in which students were asked about their preferences about religiously, culturally, and ethnically diverse classrooms, awareness of multicultural issues in education, beliefs of pre-service teachers about sufficient preparation for multicultural classes and the interest in additional training in multicultural approaches by pre-service ELT teacher which were handed out to the students at a convenient time during the lectures.

Findings and Discussion
This part presents the research findings.First, awareness of multicultural issues will be introduced.next, the results of beliefs of pre-service teachers about sufficient preparation for multicultural classes will be shown.Finally, the results of interest in additional training in multicultural approaches will be presented.According to table 1.1, it is seen that the sample group mostly preferred diverse classrooms in each sub dimension when compared with the other variables.This result may be attributed to the participants' specialized field and the fact that they are well aware that they are going to teach to students who are culturally and ethnically diverse.However, comparing these two with the religiously different preferences variable, it was seen that the percentage is less.The reason might be religious homogeneity in most parts of Turkey.Briefly, the table clearly presents that the participants prefer to teach to religiously, culturally and ethnically diverse students.As seen in Table 4.2, the number of 70.1 percent of 117 students in total show that the students are aware of the multicultural issues in Turkey.22.2 percent of the sample group stated that they are aware at an intermediate level.However, 7.7 percent of the students which is the smallest group report that they are not aware of the multicultural issues available in Turkey.Similar to Larke's (1990) study in which participants are aware of the issues related to multiculturalism, it can be said that most pre-service teachers are well aware of multicultural issues especially senior students who come across with students from different ethnic backgrounds during their practicum weeks because of the fact that Turkey has turned out to be a multicultural country due to massive immigration from the countries which are currently at war and there is a considerable number of refugee children who are in need of basic education which means that the possibility of meeting with those children at school is quite high.The items from 4 to 14 were about the sufficiency of the participants' teacher training program to equip them with the ability to deal with multicultural issues.The respondents expressed that they received adequate training on multicultural approaches to education from their teacher training courses (Item 4, M = 3,573; Item 5, M = 3,769; Item 6, M = 3, 564).However, when it comes to teaching to students from diverse ethnic backgrounds participants expressed less agreement and they are undecided in their responses (Item 7, M = 3,274; Item 8, M = 3,282, Item 9, M = 2,957).This could lead us to theory and practice gap in multicultural education in teacher training institutions.Although teacher training courses provide information on multicultural issues and multicultural education, the students may not find enough opportunities to have first-hand experience.Similarly, gay (1995) argued that there is a significant gap between theory and practice of multicultural education and Webb-Johnson, Artiles, Trent, Jackson, & Velox (1998) reported that big steps have been made to improve the theoretical instructions, however practice of multicultural education is still debated controversially.Therefore, multicultural education in teacher training institutions lacks in transferring theory to practice due to not clarified objectives and aims.In this context, gibson (as cited in Hoffman, 1996) stated that the field of multicultural education abounds with untested and not supportable goals, strategies, and outcomes.In addition, it could be interpreted that information delivered at universities and teacher-training institutions may not match with the realities of public schools with culturally diverse classrooms as reported by Schulze (2009) who stated that pre-service teachers either forget what they have been taught at the university when they go to the field or complain about the difficulties.Although the participants expressed that they received sufficient training and education on teaching to culturally diverse students, majority of them stated willingness and interest in receiving further education on multicultural issues.The finding is consistent with the finding of Barry & Lechner (1995) whose participants were also eager to receive additional training in multicultural education.Barry and Lechner (1995) attributed it to the participants' very little confidence in their abilities of multicultural teaching.Similarly, the participants in the present study may lack confidence of multicultural education and realize the importance of multicultural education in the following years because of the number of refugees in the society and their children in Turkish educational system.

Conclusion
Since Turkey has been becoming a multicultural country, multicultural issues have started to occur in teaching and learning.It is a fact that teachers used to monocultural teaching and learning environments will have difficulties in order to reach each student in the classroom.Therefore, preservice teachers, especially teachers of language subject have to be aware of multicultural diversity.According to the findings, the participants as preservice ELT teachers are commonly aware of multicultural issues in schools.Although these findings are similar to the findings of Larke (1990), it can be seen that the student-teachers escape facing cultural diversity despite training provided by the university.However, contrary to the findings of Barry & Lechner (1995), the results show that the participants are eager to receive further training in multicultural education.This can be related to the gap between theory and practice in which students may not be taught what is required in the field.

Limitations of the Study
The limitation of this study was that the study is only limited to pre-service ELT teachers at Aksaray University.Besides, the Anatolian region may not be equivalent to other regions in terms of cultural diversity.Therefore, these results cannot be generalized to all pre-service teachers in Turkey.In order to make generalizations, a bigger sample size is required.

Suggestions for Further Studies
As mentioned in the previous section, a bigger sample size may help to make generalizations.Besides, the difference between the multicultural training given at universities and what pre-service teachers face at public schools may be investigated to reveal the shortcoming of multicultural training at universities in Turkey.Besides, a qualitative study may be conducted in order to get in depth information to shed light onto students' perspectives on the theory and practice gap.For example, in Mueller and o'Connor's (2007) study, it was aimed to receive reflections of preservice teachers in the multicultural education course to define their own social positioning, inform their frames of references and influence their capacities to practice equitable education.