What do graduates say about multicultural teacher education

Arthur Levine (2006) questioned the connection between what one learns in pre-service teacher education programs and what one does as a teacher. From a meta-analysis of several studies he found that: A shockingly low percentage of principals said that their teachers were very or moderately well prepared to meet the needs of students from diverse cultural backgrounds (28 percent); to work with parents (21 percent); and to help students with limited English proficiency (16 percent). (p. 4) Since we have also been concerned about the education of diverse student populations in California, his question is consistent with the purpose of this study. We wanted to assess the impact that our teacher preparation course on multicultural education has had on teachers ’ self-perceptions and practices as multicultural educators. Lowenstein (2009) stated that not enough work has been done to determine the impact of multicultural education courses on teacher candidates once they are in the field. Although California assessments for teachers assess content background and instruction, there is