Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons^™

Developing Culturally Competent Teachers: An International Student Teaching Field Experience, Michelle Salmona, Margaret Partlo, Dan Kaczynski, Simon N. Leonard

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

This study offers a theoretical construct for better understanding how experiential learning enables student teachers to acquire social and cultural variation skills, develop cultural empathy in the K-12 classroom, and the transference of these skills to new educational situations. An Australian and United States research team used a phenomenological approach to explore the connections between the skills student teachers acquire and the application of these newly developed skills to professional practices. Participants were a group of United States pre-teachers who enrolled in a 5 week teaching experience in Australia. Findings show that participation in cultural based events is part of …