MULTCICULTURAL TEACHING PRACTICES: STUDENT PERSPECTIVES ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF MULTICULTURAL TEACHING PRACTICES

Abstract

As the world makes strides toward globalization, the demand for improved methods of multicultural teaching (MT) at the university level has dramatically increased. With growing diversity on campus, the demand for more multicultural teaching is at an all time high. Although the demands for MT practices are high, a recent survey at IUPUI revealed that many faculties continue to refrain from multicultural teaching due to a fear of backlash from both the students and other faculty members (Khaja, Springer, Bigatti, Gibau, Whiteland, & Grove, 2011). In an effort to evaluate IUPUI’s goal to incorporate more diversity, a survey on the university’s MT practices was distributed online to students that attend various schools on campus (N=4000, primarily juniors and seniors). The 466 respondents that took the survey were asked to respond to open-ended questions about their perception of multicultural teaching practices on campus. They were also provided with an opportunity to offer ideas on how the university could advance in the area of teaching diversity. The open-ended questions were quantified by creating coding categories which were pulled from common themes from the responses. Preliminary analyses suggest that the overall reactions to partaking in multicultural teaching practices are being viewed as being beneficial to student’s future endeavors. The analyses could alleviate some of the current concerns of the faculty and increase the percent of faculty that choose to participate in Multicultural Teaching.