| This study was designed to explore the state of the art of multicultural education in selected preschool programs accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Variables explored include: multicultural activities implemented in preschool classrooms, preschool teachers' perception of multicultural education, the systems within schools that support multicultural implementation, and important factors/problems encountered by teachers when integrating multicultural activities into their curriculum.;An instrument developed for this study was administered to 233 teachers in 45 NAEYC accredited preschool programs throughout New York State. Descriptive statistics, t-tests, analyses of variance and post hoc Scheffe tests were employed to analyze the data. Results of these analyses were used to determine the level of multicultural education implementation in early childhood programs, views and concerns about multicultural education for young children, and relationships between teachers' multicultural implementation and their background characteristics and program variables.;Findings of this study demonstrate that (1) most teachers in early childhood programs implement multicultural education activities in preschool curricula; (2) while most teachers believe that multicultural education for young children is relevant, infant and toddler teachers felt limited by children's age and level of understanding; (3) while teachers were most satisfied with support from administrators in implementing multicultural education activities, more appropriate materials and greater parental support were perceived as being needed; (4) teachers' rating of important factors included materials, parents, inservice training, administrators, time, preservice training and policy mandates; (5) teachers felt that homogenous communities, unavailability of up-to-date appropriate material resources and busy working parents made it more challenging to implement multicultural activities; (6) teachers' ethnic background, their professional training, and their multicultural training were significantly related to their levels of multicultural education implementation; (7) the age of children in the room and the type of funding of the program were also significantly related to teachers' levels of implementation of multicultural education.;The findings indicate that teachers need more support in terms of material resources, parents and community, and inservice training in their implementation of multicultural education. |
