Perspectives: Three Case Studies of Preservice Teachers Learning to Teach in a Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Setting
Sue Heredia (CSU Sacramento)

In a comprehensive review of research on diversity within schools in the United States Grant and Secada (1990) highlight some informative statistics. Students belonging to "minority groups" will be in the majority of many more school districts by the year 2,000, and will represent between 30 and 40 percent of the national school population. According to the Haselkorn (1994) "teachers of color make up 13 percent of the nation's teaching force while children of African America, Hispanic, Asian, and native America descent make up about 31 percent of the school-age population." The trend is for the homogenizing of the teaching force to increase while the student population becomes more ethnically and linguistically heterogenous.

In the classroom, the teacher thinks and acts in a particular and consistent way, According to his or her classroom perspective. This classroom perspective enables the teacher to make sense of his or her world to interpret it and to construct his or her actions within it. The question of how preservice teachers' classroom perspectives will influence classroom practices, expectations, and the degree to which preservice teachers are prepared to work with students whose backgrounds are different from their own merits work with students whose backgrounds are different from their own merits serious consideration in light of recent statistics on changing student and teacher demographics of the nation.

Although there is a growing body of research being conducted on the preservice (student) teaching experience the majority of these studies have been conducted with preservice teachers in non-diverse and non-ethnic settings. Some researchers (e.g., goodman, 1988; Aulich, Bean 7 Herrick, 1992) included preservice teachers from diverse backgrounds, and others (e.g., Tabachnick & Zeichner, 1984) have gathered information about diverse student bodies and communities; however, what has not been addressed is the experiences of preservice teachers working with culturally and linguistically diverse students in classroom settings. As a result, we know little about the way in which preservice teachers working in diverse settings conceptualize their own professional growth (i.e., The integration of beliefs and actions) influenced their classroom actions and interactions with students. A significant finding was that all three affirmed the importance of fairness and equal treatment, yet at times these preservice teachers brought approaches to diversity that had the potential for reproducing inequality. Another significant finding was that each of the preservice teachers considered their cooperating teachers more influential than their university preparation. The cooperating teachers were used on a regular basis, were familiar with specific teaching methods and materials the preservice teachers had been exposed to and expected to practice, and had received extensive training in how to work with diverse student populations. The findings in this study indicate that the cooperating teacher contributed little if any to professional development of the preservice teachers' ability to work with diverse student populations. One reason for this outcome is that the cooperating teachers were uncertain about the role of language and culture in the classroom. As a result, the preservice teachers left the credential program with this issue unresolved. Both of these findings present the argument that preservice teachers not only need assistance in reflecting on classroom practices, but that careful attention to the characteristics of the context is important.

One of the primary purposes of this study is to inform teacher education practice about how preservice teachers think about teaching and learning in a diverse setting. Understanding the perspectives intending teachers bring them to their professional studies could provide an insight into how to conduct curricula and program direction in order to prepare teachers for culturally and linguistically diverse educational settings.