Acquisition of Cultural Awareness in Pre-Service Teachers

Abstract

It is the desire of teacher educators in Australia that their mandated unit of study on multiculturalism and indigenous studies produces a cultural awareness in future teachers of the issues faced by multicultural and indigenous students. This paper reports a study where one cohort of 119 pre-service teachers was surveyed in the first and last lectures of the unit on what they believed would be the factors affecting their teaching in multicultural and indigenous classrooms. A significant perception change (p=0.05) of the students was measured between the first lecture and the last lecture. Students moved from a perception that physical, religious and language factors would be the main issues to their belief that prejudice, stereotyping, sensitivity and ethnocentrism would be the factor they would need to work with.