The Teacher Educator

ISSN: 0887-8730 (Print) 1938-8101 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/utte20

Multicultural teacher education for the 21st

century

Geneva Gay & Tyrone C. Howard

To cite this article: Geneva Gay & Tyrone C. Howard (2000) Multicultural teacher education for the
21st century, The Teacher Educator, 36:1, 1-16, DOI: 10.1080/08878730009555246

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08878730009555246

Published online: 20 Jan 2010.

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 MULTICULTURAL TEACHER EDUCATION
FOR THE 21st CENTURY

Geneva Gay
Curriculum and Instruction, University of Washington, Seattle
Tyrone C. Howard
School of Teaching and Learning, Ohio State University
Abstract
This article explains several reasons why multicultural preservice teacher
education is important and suggests some ways it can be better
accomplished. The authors make a strong case for teacher education
programs to be more deliberate about preparing European Americans to
teach ethnically diverse students of color. They argue that this explicit
professional preparation is needed because of the increasing racial,
cultural, and linguistic divide between teachers (predominately European
American) and K–12 students (increasinglyfromethnic groups ofcolor).
Two other factors underscore the needfor more multicultural teacher
education: the fear of diversity and the resistance to dealing with race
and racismfrequentlyexpressed by students enrolled in teacher education
programs. To overcome these problems and better prepare preservice
teachers to work effectively with ethnically diverse students the authors
suggest a two-part program of professional development.

We seriously doubt that existing preservice programs are

adequately preparing teachers to meet the instructional challenges of
ethnically, racially, socially, and linguistically diverse students in the
21st century. These doubts are prompted by several developments
that are already evident and others that are beginning to emerge.
They involve students enrolled in both K-12 schools and in teacher
education programs, and changes occurring in society at large. Some
of these are discussed in this article, along with recommendations on
how to better prepare teachers for the challenges of multicultural
education.
The Demographic Divide
According to recent statistics from the U.S. Department of
Education (1999a, 1999b), 86% of all elementary and secondary
teachers are European Americans. The number of African American
teachers has declined from a high of 12% in 1970 to 7% in 1998.
The number of Latino and Asian/Pacific Islander American teachers

1
is increasing slightly, but the percentages are still very small
(approximately 5% and 1%, respectively). Native Americans
comprise less than 1% of the national teaching force.
Student enrollments are growing in the opposite direction
racially. Sixty-four percent of K-12 students are European American.
The other 36% are distributed accordingly among groups of color:
17% African American, 14% Latinos, 4% Asian/Pacific Islander
Americans, and 1% Native Americans/Alaskans (U.S. Department of
Education, 1999a, 1999b). These enrollment trends are expected to
continue to grow as the new century progresses. For example, the
Annie E. Casey Foundation (as cited in U.S. Department of
Education, 1999a, 1999b), a private charitable foundation for
building better futures for disadvantaged children, projected that as
early as 2005 there will be significant changes in the number of
children in the U.S. by ethnic groups. European Americans are
expected to decline by 3%, but African Americans will increase by
8% and Native Americans by 6%. The greatest increases are
predicted to occur among Asian/Pacific Islanders (32%) and Latinos
(21%). Undoubtedly, these changes will be reflected in school
enrollments as well. Students currently enrolled in teacher education
programs will be affected directly by these radical changes in the
ethnic, racial, and cultural distribution of students in schools.
Furthermore, large numbers of European Americans and
students of color really do not attend school with each other; nor are
different groups of color in the same schools. Most students go to
school with others from their own ethnic groups. Stated differently,
despite over four decades of experimentation with desegregation,
massive numbers of students continue to attend racially segregated
schools. For example, students of color are the majority in 70 of the
130 school districts in the United States with a student population of
36,000 or more. This majority ranges from 5 1 % to 97%. Students of
color are 55% of the enrollments in the 449 school districts with a
population of 15,000 or more. African Americans are the
predominate group of color in 75 of the 130 largest schools districts,
Latinos in 33, Asian Americans in 6, and Native American/Alaskans
in only 1 (Alaska). Only 4 of the largest school districts have a fairly
equal distribution of Latino, African, and Asian American students
(U.S. Department of Education, 1999a).
An additional indicator of the racial separation of students in
schools is evident in the geography of school enrollments. Students of
color are heavily clustered in large cities, urban centers, and

2
occasionally in rural areas. Also, ethnic groupings of students are
specific to different regions of the country. African Americans are
heavily clustered in the Southeast and the Great Lakes region; Native
Americans in the Great Plains, Pacific Northwest and Alaska; Asian
Americans along the Pacific Coast and in Hawaii; and Latinos in
New York, Florida, and the Southwest.
Many teachers do not share residential backgrounds with
students they teach, and ethnically diverse students are not
necessarily in the same classrooms. These two facts have major
implications for teacher education. So does another developing trend
in the profession—the many veteran teachers expected to retire in the
next three to five years. A tremendous amount of experience and
expertise is going to be lost with their departures. An even bigger
concern for multicultural education is the high percentage of teachers
of color (especially African Americans) who will be among these
retirements. They will not be easily replaced because there are so few
students of color enrolled in teacher education programs. These are
added reasons why European Americans must be taught thoroughly
during their preservice training how to be effective multicultural
teachers of ethnically diverse students.

Troubling Attitudes and Assumptions

Coupled with the growing "demographic divide" among students
and teachers are some troubling attitudes toward racial and ethnic
diversity, which have strong implications for multicultural teacher
preparation in the 21st century. It would appear that two of these
are particularly significant: fear of teaching students of color and
resistance to dealing directly with race and racism in teacher preparation
and classroom practices.

Fear of Teaching Diversity

It is a common occurrence for students in teacher education
programs to express various forms of subtle resistance to embracing
the multicultural imperative for quality teaching and learning, and to
work diligently to develop the knowledge and skills needed for its
effective implementation. It has been the authors' personal
observations that this resistance takes many different forms,
including fear, denial of the verity of ethnic and cultural diversity in
teaching and learning, and reluctance to confront issues of racial,
ethnic, and cultural diversity directly and substantively. Elementary
preservice teachers frequently declare that they are afraid of engaging

3
different ethnic groups and multicultural education content in their
classrooms. Secondary education students often express doubts about
the relevance of multicultural education for their content areas,
especially the case for those in math and science. Both preservice and
inservice teachers are puzzled about how they can teach
simultaneously for meeting standards of academic excellence and
multicultural education. Many think this is impossible, even as they
claim to accept the need to do both.
When the reasons for these fears and resistance are examined,
racial prejudices, anxiety about lack of knowledge of ethnic and
cultural diversity, and doubts about teaching ethnic others quickly
surface. These attitudes are exemplified in statements made by the
authors' teacher education students, such as "I've never lived near or
had any close contact with Native, African, or Latino Americans;"
"There are too many cultures and ethnic groups and I don't know
enough to teach them all;" "I won't have time to teach everything else
and multicultural education, too;" and "There's nothing
multicultural about algebra, biology, geography, chemistry, calculus,
or computer science." Some fears are more immediate and directly
related to multicultural experiences within teacher education
programs. Illustrative of these are comments made by a significant
number of students who enroll in our multicultural education classes.
They are concerned about "inadvertently saying something stupid or
hurtful and embarrassing themselves or offending people from other
ethnic groups;" "political correctness being so strong that honest and
substantive discussions would not occur;" "worrying over culture and
ethnicity while losing sight of 'valid' educational objectives;" and "not
being able to move beyond superficial knowledge of other cultures
and therefore perpetuating stereotypes." These are legitimate
concerns that need to be addressed explicitly in multicultural teacher
education programs.
Even some of those students who appear to be more receptive to
teaching multicultural education express problematic attitudes and
assumptions. When they talk about their preparation for
multicultural teaching they often simplify it to "being aware and
appreciative of cultural differences," "dialoguing about diversity," and
"infusing cultural diversity into teaching." These students seem not
to realize that cultural awareness and conversations about racial,
ethnic, and cultural diversity without pedagogical action are
insufficient to change their teaching. Nor do they realize that
multicultural infusion requires sophisticated cultural knowledge,
curriculum design, and pedagogical skills.

4
Resistance to Dealing with Race and Racism
Other students point out that disparities in school achievement
and inequities among ethnic groups in the larger U.S. society are
more the result of social class, gender, economics, power, and
privilege than race and ethnicity. To support their claims these
students evoke such "evidence" as "people are more alike than
different," "there are more differences within than among ethnic
groups," and "regardless of ethnic or racial identity, middle and upper
class people (especially males) are advantaged over the poor." While
these students may be willing to participate in "dialogues" about
racially and ethnically-related issues with members of diverse groups,
they want these conversations to take place in "safe environments."
These "safe places" usually are not clearly defined, but they seem to
imply conversations that are devoid of controversy, conflict,
confrontation, and contention. Also appeals frequently made to
concepts like "racelessness," "race as a social construction," and
"privilege" found in social science research and scholarship may
support claims that race and racism are not paramount in teaching
multicultural education.
Yet there is evidence that race and racism continue to be critical,
influential factors in society and schools. One example of this
evidence is a recent report on race relations released by Leadership
Education for Asian Pacifies (as cited in Kang, 2000). The report
indicated that although open hostility and bigotry against Asian
Americans have declined significantly since World War II they are
still perceived as "foreigners." One of the scholars contributing to
the report declared that, "No matter what their citizenship, how long
they may have resided in the United States or how assimilated they
are, the 'common understanding' that Asians are an alien presence
in America is still the prevailing assumption in American culture"
(p. A7). This perception is rather ironic, given that Asian Americans
are the most educated of all ethnic groups of color in the U.S., and
their presence and influence are strongly felt in high status arenas
such as academia, business, and high-tech industries. Aliens (1998)
study on children's perceptions of race and class in the media revealed
that children from all ethnic groups are aware of ethnic and racial
stereotypes presented (especially of African Americans and Latinos) in
the media at an early age, and understand the power of television and
other media in shaping people's opinions about diversity.
According to Bartolome and Macedo (1997), "the popular press
and the mass media educate more people about issues regarding

5
ethnicity and race than all other sources of education available to
U.S. citizens" (p. 223). This media education is a form of ideological
management (Spring, 1992; Cortés, 1995, 2000). Cortés (2000) and
Dates and Barlow (1990) explained further that the importance of
mass media as sources of multicultural information goes far beyond
the question of inclusion and the accuracy of diversity. It is a matter
of constructing, disseminating, and institutionalizing particular, often
distorted, images of different ethnic and cultural groups. Students
and teachers are bombarded with these images, and the attitudes they
evoke, on a day-to-day basis. Cortés (2000) suggested the media
influence (what he calls the "mass media multicultural curriculum")
extends even beyond creating and disseminating images of ethnic
groups. It also involves
transmission of information (correct or incorrect, balanced or distorted,
contextualized or stereotypical) . . . disseminating and influencing of
values and attitudes . . . shaping and reinforcing of expectations . . .
providing of models for action and the disinhibiting of other actions. In
short,. .. the mass media have contributed significantly to the corpus of
American thinking, feeling, and acting in the realm of diversity, (p. 69)
These images, thoughts, feelings, and actions, in turn, have strong
implications for the nature and quality of multicultural teacher
education and K-12 instruction.
There also are direct correlations between power, privilege, and
achievement, and the racial and ethnic identity of students' who are
successfull in school. African American, Latino, and Native American
students perform at radically different levels (usually lower) than
European Americans on all measures of school achievement that are
routinely examined in national and state-level assessment programs.
These include school attendance and graduate rates, subject test
scores, disciplinary referrals, enrollment in gifted and special
education, and college completion. A horrifying indicator of the
effects of the intersection of race, ethnicity, and school achievement is
the fact that the performance of poor 1 lth-grade Latinos and African
Americans is lower than or barely equal to that of 8th-grade middle-
class European Americans in the academic core subjects of reading,
writing, math, and science (U.S. Department of Education, 1999a,
1999b). Although the range of difference is somewhat smaller, the
performance of middle-class students of color is not comparable to
their European American counterparts (Gay, 1997).
These are not coincidences. Nor will they be corrected by
denying the significant role of race, ethnicity, and racism in the

6
educational experiences of students from different ethnic groups.
Thus, teachers need to develop knowledge and skills for transforming
programs and practices that perpetuate racism and otherwise
dishonor ethnic and cultural diversity. This training should begin
with multicultural education being mandatory, explicit, and thorough
in all teacher education programs. Whether teachers intend to work
in schools with students from predominately homogeneous
populations or from multiple ethnic groups and cultural
backgrounds, all need to develop multicultural knowledge and
pedagogical skills. No students should graduate from any teacher
education program and be certified or hired to teach without being
thoroughly trained in multicultural education. Such education will
go far beyond the one or two introductory survey multicultural
courses that are typical of many current teacher education programs.

Acquiring Cultural Knowledge of Self and Others

Instructors of multicultural education spend much of their time
trying to persuade students of the meaning and significance of
culture and ethnicity in the lives of people. Although these
understandings are critical, developing them is not exclusively the
task of college of education professors. Our responsibilities lie more
with the application of culturally diverse knowledge and sensitivities
to the various aspects of the educational enterprise. Yet knowledge of
cultural diversity is fundamental to the effective implementation of
multicultural education. Therefore, a reasonable place to begin
preparation programs for multicultural teaching is with
understanding the ethnicity and culture of different ethnic groups,
including European Americans.
Many European Americans claim they have no culture or
ethnicity; they are simply "Americans." They assume that their
norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors are universal givens, "just the
way things are." This, of course, is not true. These claims—what
some scholars describe as "taken-for granted assumptions" (Bowers &
Flinders, 1990)—preclude European American ethnicity and culture
from being contested, and automatically place other ethnic groups
who do not subscribe to the same norms in lower-status rankings
Critical Cultural Consciousness
The exploration of cultural consciousness and ethnic identity
development should be critical when students analyze their own
ethnic heritages; analyze the assumptions and beliefs they hold about

7
other ethnic groups and cultures; and compare their assumptions
about cultural diversity with other groups' versions of knowledge,
truth, and reality. For example, European American teacher
education students might critically examine what they think are the
social priorities of various Asian American groups and compare them
to what these groups declare are their own priorities. They also may
analyze their perceptions of whiteness in comparison to how it is
perceived by different groups of color. Or, what cultural values and
socialization are reflected in a variety of beliefs and behaviors
considered desirable or "normative" in learning, such as spotlighting
the most academically accomplished students, covering the subject
matter content, and making individuals more important than groups
and organizations.
Unless European American teachers seriously analyze and change
their cultural biases and ethnic prejudices (toward self and others)
they are not likely to be very diligent and effective in helping
students to do likewise. Part of this self-examination is unpacking
their own ethnicity and understanding themselves as racial and
cultural beings. Central to this process is knowing and admitting that
racism permeates schools and society, recognizing the benefits they
derive from it, and making a conscientious commitment to stop its
perpetuation. In a recent book examining the role of European
Americans in multicultural education Howard (1999) supported this
mandate. Using an insider's perspective and personal voice he advised
White educators to
look within ourselves and realign our deepest assumptions and perceptions
regarding the racial marker that we carry, namely Whiteness.. . . We need
to understand the dynamics of past and present dominance, face how we
have been shaped by myths of superiority, and begin to sort out our
thoughts, emotions, and behaviors relative to race and other dimensions
of human diversity.. . . We must. . . transform both ourselves and the
social conditions of injustice that continue to stifle the potential of too
many of our students from all racial and cultural groups, (pp. 4, 6)
Placing more of the responsibilities for implementing
multicultural education on the shoulders of European American
educators signifies a significant shift of emphasis. Previously the onus
has been placed on educators of color. Too many people still make
this assumption, as evidenced by the frequency with which "hire
more educators of color" or "get more students of color into teacher
education programs" is the ready response to discussions about the
need to implement more multicultural education in schools.
Expecting European Americans to be in the forefront of the

8
implementation of multicultural education is both logical and
realistic. After all, they comprise 86% of all teachers (U.S.
Department of Education, 1999b). However, this does not in any
way diminish the roles, responsibilities, and contributions of
educators of color to multicultural teaching. It is simply that they
cannot do the job by themselves.
Cultural and ethnic self-analyses and self-reflections are
important skills for all teachers to develop because, as Walsh (1988)
suggested, "Thinking critically is the antithesis of prejudicial
thinking," and "A critical thinker strives for as accurate a worldview
as possible to make informed judgments" (p. 280). The open-
mindedness and humility that result from understanding how culture
and ethnicity affect their own being and behaving also will make
teachers receptive to the validity of others' differentness. This kind of
reciprocity of rights to culture and ethnicity is imperative for effective
multicultural teaching.

Techniques for Developing Ethnic and Cultural Self-Awareness

Some helpful guidance in how teachers can become more
consciously aware of their own cultures and how they influence
attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors about self and others is offered by
Spindler and Spindler (1993). They have developed a technique
called "cultural therapy." It combines acquiring cultural knowledge of
self and others with developing culturally informed pedagogicalaction
in classrooms.
These self-analysis strategies can be further enriched by others
gleaned from Howard's (1999) personal reflections on the process of
transformative White ethnic identity development, which he
considers essential to effective multicultural teaching by European
Americans. These include (a) critical honesty about the culturally
conditioned assumptions of White dominance and perceptions of
truth; (b) genuine empathy for the experiences, issues, and
perspectives of other ethnic groups; (c) advocating for the
redistribution of power and privilege among ethnic groups; and
(d) investing resources and energies in the actual process of change.
Bell, Washington, Weinstein, and Love (1997) proposed eight
other elements of self-knowledge as prerequisites to teaching for
social justice. These are awareness of one's own social identities;
confronting self-biases and prejudices; resolving anxieties about
dealing with prejudices toward diversity expressed by students;
overcoming doubts about personal competency and fears of

9
antagonizing ethnically diverse students; dealing with emotional
intensity and concerns about losing classroom control; disclosure of
personal beliefs, values, and experiences; negotiating power and
authority issues; and attending to institutional risks and resistance.
These elements of self-knowledge apply as well to multicultural
teaching in general. Social justice in schools and society is both an
intended outcome and a descriptive characteristic of multicultural
education.
Cultural, racial, and ethnic knowledge about self and others
should be developed through courses designed in collaboration with
professors of education, but taught in various social science units
across university campuses. These might include cultural
anthropology, sociolinguistics, social psychology, and ethnic and
women's studies. The competencies they engender should be
requirements for admission to colleges of education. The magnitude
of these requirements might range from a multicultural core cluster
of three or four courses to a full-fledge minor in cultural diversity.
Developing Multicultural Pedagogical Knowledge and Skills
After a sufficient knowledge background about ethnic and
cultural diversity has been acquired, the next step in preparation for
multicultural teaching is learning how to translate multicultural
knowledge into pedagogical practices. This training should center
around six major areas of competence. These are (a) multicultural
classroom communications; (b) multicultural foundations of
education; (c) multicultural pedagogical knowledge and skills;
(d) multicultural performance appraisal; (e) public relations skills
for culturally diverse families, groups, and communities; and
(f) multicultural change agency. We examine four of the six briefly
to give a sample of how they should be operationalized in teacher
education.

Multicultural Communications
Skills in multicultural classroom communications are necessary
for two obvious reasons. First, effective communication is the heart
of teaching. Second, communication is strongly influenced by
culture. Students from different ethnic groups and cultural
backgrounds talk, write, think, and listen in ways that are different
from school patterns and expectations. More specifically, these
differences can be seen in relationships between speakers and
listeners, problem-solving processes, task engagement, organization of

10
ideas, self-presentation, how individuals gain entry into
conversations, and how speakers relate to the content of
conversations.
Two quick examples are provided here to illustrate some of these
communicative differences (see Gay, 2000 for a more detailed
discussion of them). One is the lingering controversy and confusion
over African American Ebonics. Many people still think that Ebonics
is only grammatically incorrect Mainstream Standard English. Others
restrict it to linguistic structure. In fact, the most vital dimensions of
African American communication are its discourse features (e.g., how
ideas are organized, words are used, and significance signaled), and
cultural nuances (e.g., rhythmic patterns, values, and self-
positioning) embedded within them. Without understanding these,
teachers will not be able to cull from African American students all
that they know about what is being taught. Nor can they teach
students as well as they should how to shift communicative styles to
serve diverse purposes, such as taking tests and engaging in "school
talk" to improve academic performance.
The other example has to do with how students from different
ethnic groups organize their thoughts in written and verbal forms.
Two major patterns are usually identified: topic-centered and topic-
chaining (Au, 1993). The first one is the preference of European
Americans and schools, while the second is the preference of groups
of color. Briefly, topic-centered "talk" is linear, reportorial,
descriptive, and dispassionate. By comparison topic-chaining talk is
circular, passionate, elaborate, episodic, advocating, and story telling.
Without understanding the details of these communicating styles,
teachers will not be able to "hear" their students who use them or
"talk" in ways that their students can understand. Nor can they teach
topic-chaining students skills in topic-centered speaking and writing
so that they can improve their performance in conventional school
settings.

Multicultural Foundations of Education

Awareness of the foundational principles and ideology of
multicultural teaching is another essential skill. These principles
include historical, philosophical, sociological, psychological, political,
cultural, and economic analyses and explanations of what
multicultural education is and why it is needed. These explorations
will introduce teacher education students to the scholarship in the
field and defuse some of the hysteria, misconceptions, and distortions

11
surrounding multicultural education by dispelling some of the faulty
notions that surround it. These include the belief that no consensus
exists among leaders on critical components of multicultural
education; that multicultural education can be defined by anyone for
his or her own purposes without considering the thinking of major
scholars in the field; that there is no real basis for multicultural
education because the issues and conditions that contributed to its
origins have been resolved; and that multicultural education and
good quality education goals (e.g., academic excellence, national
unity, and democracy) are incompatible. In order to dispel these
notions and be better informed advocates for multicultural
education, preservice teachers must study its foundations.
Specific content components of foundations of multicultural
education might include analysis of issues such as:

• how funding patterns and legislative policies (e.g., anti-affirmative

action and bilingual education, and the English only movement)
affect the educational opportunities of different ethnic groups.
• the effects on students of social and educational treatment of
different ethnic groups in popular culture and mass media.
• disaggregated and qualitative interpretations of different types of
achievement data, both within and across ethnic groups, and the
implications of these for instructional reform.
• appropriateness of conventional developmental psychology
principles, learning theories, and research protocols for use with
ethnically diverse students.
• relationships among culture, language, and learning.
• legal precedents for multicultural education.
• historical antecedents (individuals, programs, and ideologies) of
multicultural education.
• social justice for ethnically and culturally diverse groups within
educational contexts.
Multicultural Pedagogical Skills
Teachers need to develop multicultural pedagogical knowledge
and skills. Two types of pedagogical competencies are necessary:
general and content-specific. There are powerful ideas about what
constitutes multicultural teaching, but too many teachers do not
know what these are, what they mean, or how to accomplish them
in classroom instruction. They are even more puzzled about how
to do multicultural teaching within the various content areas

12
routinely taught in schools. Developing skills in these two levels of
multicultural pedagogy makes sense, because they are consistent with
the logical sequence of how pedagogical mastery is accomplished.
General multicultural pedagogy skills that teachers should learn
deal with the domain of multicultural education itself. They include
using multiple ethnic perspectives; alternative instructional
techniques to achieve common learning outcomes; comparative
analyses across diverse ethnic groups; matching teaching styles to the
learning styles of diverse ethnic groups; empowering marginalized
ethnic groups within the instructional process; cooperative learning
among ethnically diverse students; creating climates and
communities conducive to learning for diverse groups; culturally
responsive teaching; recognizing, mobilizing, and engendering the
"voices" of different ethnic groups and experiences; and teaching for
social change and social justice.
Learning how to place these techniques within specific subject
areas is the next level of multicultural content pedagogical skills
development. Some examples are how to use multiple ethnic
perspectives in teaching social studies issues and concepts (e.g.,
protest, power, politics, change, and the struggle for social justice);
how to use cooperative learning and engender multiple ethnic voices
in teaching computations and problem solving in math and science;
or how to include multiculturally relevant and authentic materials
when teaching reading and writing skills in language arts courses.
Both types of multicultural pedagogical skills are imperative; the first
is a prerequisite for the second, and the second is essential to the
feasibility of multicultural education implementation in K-12
classrooms. Teachers are more likely to do multicultural education
when they know how to link it systematically and routinely to the
other subjects and skills they teach.
Of equal importance to integrating multicultural education into
other subjects taught in schools is learning how to teach students
from ethnically diverse groups. This is an extension of the idea
introduced earlier of matching teaching styles with different ethnic
learning styles. If, indeed, ethnicity, culture, and prior experiences
influence how students learn (as we firmly believe), then teachers
must know how to teach differently students from these various
backgrounds. Take, for example, recent immigrants from Vietnam,
the Philippines, Ethiopia, and Panama. Their socializations about
how to do schooling are radically different from the expectations
customarily practiced by U.S. teachers. Many native-born students of

13
color also learn values and rules of behaviors in their home cultures
that are inconsistent with school norms. In order to teach these
diverse students (and others) effectively, teachers need to know
explicitly how their particular cultural values and beliefs are
manifested in learning behaviors, what teaching techniques are most
suitable for them, and how to adapt instructional strategies,
relationships, and other classroom elements to better accommodate
their "sociocultural frameworks and cognitive schémas." The closer
these match, the better students will perform on all aspects of school
achievement.

Multicultural Performance Assessment

A similar kind of skills extension is required for teachers to learn
how to do multicultural performance assessment. Just as learning
styles and cultural orientations are critical criteria for teaching, they
are equally valuable for designing equitable, culturally appropriate,
and authentic achievement measures for diverse students. It is unfair
and unethical to depend entirely on written, individually
competitive, standardized tests to determine the achievement of
students whose cultural socialization gives priority to oral expression,
cooperative group efforts, and performance demonstrations of
mastery. The "one method for all" that is so much the emphasis of
current "standards testing" (and even alternative assessment in the
form of written portfolios) is not very amenable to multicultural
assessment.
Teachers need to use multiple, multiculturally responsive
assessment techniques with ethnically different students. In other
words, measures and procedures used to determine achievement
should be matched to the performance and learning styles of students
from different ethnic groups. Instead of relying exclusively on pencil
and paper assessment techniques, teachers need to learn how to use
other means such as dramatizations, role-playing, interviews,
observations, peer feedback, audio and visual journals, and
conversions of learning from one form or genre to another (e.g., from
words to pictures, essays to poetry, writing to speaking). Where
standardized testing is unavoidable, teachers should learn to teach
students how to study across learning styles and shift performance
modes to accommodate the testing formats.

How Can We Do What We Must

Ideally, all of the multicultural competencies discussed earlier will
he prominent in all aspects of the entire teacher education program,

14
from course work to practicum, exit requirements, certification, and
employment. Unfortunately, this may not happen for some time
because there is still strong resistance to multicultural education
and a lack of implementation skills among professors of teacher
education. They have many of the same attitudes, concerns, and
assumptions about the need for and ways to accomplish multicultural
education as teacher education students. Consequently, many
professors of education need to go through multicultural education
training similar to that which we have proposed for their students.
Can they teach what they do not know or value? Can colleges of
education afford to continue graduating students who are
inadequately prepared in multicultural education? Will K—12
ethnically diverse students ever have a fair chance of receiving
educational equity and academic excellence under the tutelage of
teachers who do not know how to care about and teach them most
effectively? We think the answer to all of these questions is a
resounding "NO." Therefore, teacher education faculties must be
held as accountable for implementing quality multicultural education
as they should expect their students to be in K-12 classrooms.
Certainly multicultural issues in teaching and learning are as critical
as issues of sexual harassment, and increasingly universities are
mandating training and accountability of faculties on these. Issues of
cultural and ethnic diversity in education deserve comparable status
and treatment.
But, we cannot wait until all members of college of education
faculties are sufficiently skilled (relative to attitudes, knowledge, and
teaching techniques regarding infusion) to proceed aggressively with
preparation for multicultural teaching. For the foreseeable future
separate multicultural education courses within teacher preparation
programs are imperative. They should be academically robust,
present across the duration of the program, and parallel the
competency areas we discussed earlier. Without this kind of
comprehensive training too many teachers will continue to be
threatened by cultural diversity and unsure about their abilities to
effectively teach ethnically diverse students. K-12 students will
continue to suffer from the negative effects of these teachers' fears
and uncertainties, and educational disparities among ethnic groups
will prevail. We must break this vicious cycle by ensuring that all
college of education students are thoroughly prepared to do high
quality multicultural teaching, regardless of where and whom they
teach. This is the teacher education mandate for the 21st century.

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