Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons^™

Assessing Preservice Teachers’ Concerns And Comforts With Multicultural Education, Carmen Montecinos, Francisco Rios

Woodring College of Education Faculty Publications

Currently, racial/ethnic minority students represent a third of the K­12 student enrollment across the United States; by the year 2035, they will represent over 50 percent (American Educational Research Association, Division K Newsletter, 1998). This significant increase in the ethnic diversity of the K­12 population, coupled with persistent disparities in educational attainment among various ethnic/racial groups in the United States, has supported an educational reform movement known as multicultural education (Banks, 1997). This movement’s goal is to redesign schooling in ways that "increase educational equity for a range of cultural, ethnic, and economic groups" (Banks, 1997, p. 7). Teacher …