| Teacher educators in the U.S. and elsewhere are faced with the challenges of preparing prospective teachers to be sensitive to a culturally diverse student population and to use computer technology in their teaching. This study examined how students in the elementary education Professional Year (PY) program at the University of Pittsburgh were socialized during the 2003--2004 academic year with respect to their views, knowledge, and skills concerning these two issues.;Conceptually, the study was informed by a duality of structure framework, which assumes that the socialization process is constrained and enabled by the structure and ideology of the teacher education program, while at the same time pre-service teachers' understandings, interpretations, and behaviors contribute to shaping their identities and capacities as future teachers. Field notes from participant observation in five courses in the program; program and course documents; responses to a researcher-developed, self-administered questionnaire; and in-depth interviews with eleven PY students and seven instructors served as data sources for this study.;The program provided few, explicit messages about and experiences related to teaching students from different cultural backgrounds and to integrating technology into their instruction. Thus, most students' views on these issues were neither reinforced nor changed. Nevertheless, a few students' views concerning using computer technology in teaching did change, and these changes can be traced to relatively isolated, but significant experiences they had during their program.;Moreover, the pre-service elementary school teachers involved in this study tended to comply with their university-based and school-based socializing agents, but they were not passive recipients of the messages and ideas communicated to them. Some privately questioned how their university-based instructors addressed these issues and some disagreed with how their cooperating teachers operated, though they did not discuss the issues with these socializing agents.;It is recommended that university courses and school-based field experiences be designed to give more explicit and sustained attention (separately and in combination) to issues of cultural diversity and technology-enhanced instructional strategies. Furthermore, issues of cultural diversity and computer technology should be considered seriously in recruiting students and in selecting/developing faculty in teacher education programs. |
