Current Research @ - Full Citation and Abstract


	Illinois State University

AAT 9942642

Elementary school teachers' conceptualizations and practices of multicultural education and mathematics

Bohn, Anita Perna;

ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY

EdD

1999

Jerich, Kenneth F.

DAI-A 60/08, p. 2804, Feb 2000

0-599-44285-9

188

EDUCATION, ELEMENTARY (0524); EDUCATION, TEACHER TRAINING (0530); EDUCATION, MATHEMATICS (0280); EDUCATION, BILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL (0282)

Preview 7.16Mb image-only PDF, free!

Shopping Cart Marked List

Grounded theory research was used to determine the nature of elementary school teachers' conceptualizations and practices of multicultural education and mathematics, and the factors influencing the orientations they have adopted. Interview and observation data were collected from 14 elementary school teachers at two different school sites in a large midwestern school district. Data were encoded and categorized, and categories were analyzed and compared to existing typologies and to expert analysis of the relevant issues. Most teachers were found to embrace the human relations model of multicultural education. Some teachers whose life experiences afforded them a deeper understanding of minority issues were found to possess more advanced notions of multicultural education. Participants were found to conceptualize and teach mathematics as a precise, predictable, unreflective, textbook-bound and rule-conforming subject, in which multicultural education had little relevance. Many participants expressed antipathy towards mathematics or insecurities in their own mathematical abilities. Six conclusions were drawn from the findings: (a) teachers base their conceptualizations and practices of multicultural education upon their own life experiences; (b) teachers whose life experiences afford them a deeper understanding of minority issues tend to possess more advanced conceptualizations and practices of multicultural education; (c) deeper understandings of minority group concerns will not necessarily cause teachers to incorporate political activism into their multicultural classroom practices; (d) Sleeter and Grant's 1988 typology of multicultural education is a moderately effective tool for analyzing and understanding factors influencing teacher growth in multicultural education; (e) these elementary school teachers are not in a good position to help minorities achieve equity in mathematics; (f) negative experiences with the culture of school mathematics may be as responsible for teachers' conceptualizations about mathematics, as it has been for discouraging and intimidating students from marginalized groups from taking mathematics.