| This qualitative study examines preservice teachers' perceptions of a field assignment, the Caregiver Conversation Project, designed to begin development of multicultural social competence. The Caregiver Conversation Project is part of a concurrent teacher education course and is situated in a community-based service-learning multicultural field experience, during which each preservice teacher mentors a student who lives in a low-income housing community. Using phenomenological research methods, 15 interviews were conducted with 5 junior-year preservice teachers who were in their first semester of the elementary teacher education program at the University of Florida. The study participants, like the general teaching community, were White middle- to upper-class, female, and had limited past multicultural experience. One main question guided this study: What meanings do preservice teachers make of an activity within a multicultural field experience? Two subquestions were What similarities are there among the preservice teachers' meaning? and What factors explain these similarities?;Findings suggest that the preservice teachers experienced similar forms of discomfort, including being in the unfamiliar surroundings of the low-income housing community where they lost taken-for-granted cultural cues and norms causing difficulties arranging the Mentee Caregiver Conversation (MCC), and asking questions they perceived would cause discomfort in the caregivers or parents and themselves. Further, they broadened their definitions of a caring caregiver or parent and decided that there were more similarities than differences between their parents' beliefs about education and those of their mentees' caregivers or parents.;Various factors help explain these similarities: (1) The preservice teachers came from very similar backgrounds and had similar past multicultural experience. (2) They came to the Caregiver Conversation Project with preconceived notions about low-income housing communities and the families who live in them. (3) They assumed they knew the kinds of questions their mentees' caregivers or parents would find intrusive. (4) They held narrow definitions of a "caring" caregiver/parent. (5) They lacked experience asking qualitative interview questions. (6) Their desire for high academic achievement in the concurrent teacher education course overshadowed learning about their mentees' families. |
