The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate how collective conceptual reflections facilitated by online blogs can promote pre‐service teachers' growth in multicultural education…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate how collective conceptual reflections facilitated by online blogs can promote pre‐service teachers' growth in multicultural education classes.
Design/methodology/approach
Analysis of one blog is used to demonstrate how information gained through that triggered the instructor's informed reflection and guided subsequent in‐class teaching/learning.
Findings
Through the analysis of the demonstrative blog, it becomes apparent that while pre‐service teachers were appropriating vocabulary used in the field of multicultural education, their narratives were superficial and oversimplified. Subsequent in‐class activities designed to attend to the conceptual gaps were used to problematize the simplistic views.
Research limitations/implications
The data presented cannot be generalized to all pre‐service teachers. Since the purpose of this paper is to attend to the process and not the content, the demonstrative blog serves only as one possible example, which can be easily adapted with different concepts/goals.
Practical implications
It is proposed that the identification of students' collective zones of proximal development (Vygotsky) in key elements of the multicultural learning chain can provide important information to the instructor for the re‐design of future teaching.
Originality/value
Continual assessment of the effectiveness of multicultural education classes is needed, if such classes are to have a long‐term impact on pre‐service teachers' future practice. The micro‐level method proposed in this paper offers one possible way to manage the oftentimes overwhelming amount of information that they are built upon while continually monitoring students' learning.
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Keywords
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the relationship between foreign-born faculty and academic freedom. Upon identification of the focal population, a literature review of…
Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the relationship between foreign-born faculty and academic freedom. Upon identification of the focal population, a literature review of the multifaceted challenges that foreign-born faculty face in academy is offered. It is followed by an analysis of the ways in which faculty respond to these challenges and an investigation of scholars’ proposals for institutions of higher education that aim to provide inclusive spaces. This chapter concludes with a discussion of ways in which institutional initiatives can assist foreign-born faculty and promote spaces for their exercise of academic freedom.