The Research On Multicultural Teacher Education Programs In The Us

In the1960s, The national revival movement in the United States gave birth to the thought of multicultural education. Many educators advocates implementation of multicultural education reform in order to safeguard the equal rights of all ethnic minority students by education. Faced with the growing diversity of students in the classroom, teachers need to provide a relatively fair education for all of them. Teachers are required to implement multicultural education effectively regardless of students’ race, ethnicity, language, socio-economic status, gender and so on. However, facing this demand, the ability of the majority of teachers are limited. Therefor, multicultural education, combining with teacher education, formed a new research area:multicultural teacher education(MTE for short).After years of development, the MTE in the US has its own characteristics:Basing on relatively mature MTE theory, carried out a distinctive practice. Teachers in the P-12schools are mainly prepared by various types of teacher education programs. Therefor, to explore the current multicultural teacher education practice, these programs,especially for the preparation of multicultural teachers, are the object of this paper, including the following questions:How did the MTE programs generate and develop? What’s the basic ideas? What’s the preparation objectives? And how about the curriculum, the instruction, the practicum and the evaluation? After discussion the effectiveness of these programs, how to understand and evaluate this new situation in the US? What are the implications for the understanding and reflection of multicultural teacher preparation in China?Based on these questions, this paper is divided into the following sections:Introduction. It analyses the research background, including literature review, the definitions of related items,as well as an overview of the whole subject. The first part analyzes the formation of MTE programs, including the social background, the P-12multicultural education status quo and its development history.The second part discusses the basic concept of the MTE programs, including analysis of several of multiculturalism and social justice, the core concept of the MTE programs is social justice.The third part conduct a comprehensive analysis of MTE programs from the static level, explaining the objectives, principles of curriculum development, curriculum models, textbooks and learning materials, curriculum implementation approach and some other elements.The fourth part investigated the operation of the MTE programs from the dynamic level, understanding of the program’s personnel, analyzing the operation of the programs, including teaching strategies, teaching practice and evaluation.The fifth part summarizes the effectiveness of the process of the programs, discuss the main achievements and experiences, problems and future trends.The last part is for the inspiration and reference.Based on the analysis of MTE programs in China, put forwards its enlightenments to China, made some recommendations for improvement our teacher education programs,especially for the minority ares.Then made a summary of this research, including an overview of research results and later efforts in this area.