Award Date

1-1-2008

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Special Education

First Committee Member

Kyle Higgins

Number of Pages

277

Abstract

This study was designed to explore a model of teaching multicultural principles in special education pre-student teaching fieldwork. The ultimate goal was to ascertain the impact of model components on student knowledge, attitudes, and lesson plan design. Data were collected for 13 weeks during the special education pre-student teaching seminar. The data collection instruments were the Multicultural/Diversity Content Test (Ambrosio, 2000), the Multicultural/Diversity Scale-Revised (Ambrosio, 1998), and the Lesson Plan Assessment (Ambrosio, Hogan, & Miller, 1999). The Special Education pre-student teachers participated in 13 multicultural/diversity lectures/lessons as well as 25% of the participants were observed in their pre-student teaching fieldwork; The data from this study indicate that the pre-student teacher knowledge base concerning diversity and multicultural issues did not significantly increase over the course of the semester. However, the data do indicate that the attitudes of the pre-student teachers concerning diversity issues did change significantly in the positive direction. This indicates that the participants improved their attitudes about multicultural education and diversity issues after participating in the infused seminar and fieldwork. There were no attitude differences found among students from diverse groups and those not from diverse groups, among students from different age groups, or between male and female students; Data from the analysis of the pre-student teachers' lesson plans indicated no significant difference in the diversity objectives or the overall quality of the lesson plans over the course of the semester. However, the data analysis did indicate a significant improvement in the lesson plans concerning the multicultural content of the lesson plans over the course of the semester.

Keywords

Best Practices; Educators; Fieldwork; Infusing; Lesson; Lesson Planning; Multicultural Education; Planning; Practices; Preservice; Preservice Teaching; Special; Special Educators; Student; Student Teaching; Teacher Education; Teaching

Controlled Subject

School management and organization; Curriculum planning; Teachers--Training of; Special education

File Format

pdf

File Size

3276.8 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

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