Educational attention to ethnic and cultural diversity: New professional competences of teachers

Abstract

In spite of being recognised in legislation, attention to cultural diversity, is still more a desire than a reality. Teachers do not have an appropriate knowledge about the characteristics of minority ethnic children as to how to provide the educational attention they need.

In this work we present the results of a research carried out with 1404 future teachers´ students attitude to various dimensions such as the scale of attitudes to multicultural education, the role of school, its effects in the classroom, teachers´ training, intercultural education programmes, cultural dimension of teaching. Deepening on the students´ opinions through a semantic differential and focus groups was also treated. The answers of these education students show the demand for specialised training in this field. Thos study comments on the results and suggests proposals of action.

The most relevant conclusions of this study show that students do not reject cultural diversity but they have a very poor consciousness about it. However, in general terms their attitude is rather positive.