An assessment of teacher education programs according to a developmental typology

Introduction. We must begin to monitor, evaluate and validate the impact that teacher education programs have on the products produced by out educational programs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine what levels of multiculturalism are exemplified by selected teacher education programs. Statement of the Problem. Teacher education programs have the potential for developing the kind of training that will prepare teachers for teaching in a society and world characterized by diversity. The problem to be addressed in this study was do teacher education programs distribute themselves differently on the Institutional Developmental Typology. Objectives of the Study. The objective of this study was to determine the extent of multiculturalism in pre-selected teacher education programs. A questionnaire was developed to assess the extent of multiculturalism in selected teacher education programs. In addition, the following hypotheses were tested regarding the impact of enrollment (SIZE) of institution, state legislative policy and ethnic composition of the teacher education faculty on the extent of multiculturalism. H1: There is a positive relationship between student enrollment (SIZE) of institutions and the extent of multiculturalism. H2: There is a positive relationship between State Boards of Education policy and the extent of multiculturalism. H3: There is a positive relationship between the ethnic composition of teacher education faculty members and the extent of multiculturalism within teacher education programs. Methodology. The analysis was twofold: descriptive and hypotheses-testing. A frequency and percentage distribution was constructed to describe the sample. The Fisher's Test of Significance was applied to test the hypotheses for significance of the correlation. The .05 level of significance was used as a criterion for accepting or rejecting the hypotheses. Findings. The significant findings of this study are as follows: (1) The levels are not cumulative and all institutions had low or no scores on all three levels; (2) Larger institutions have a tendency to be more multiculturalized than do smaller institutions; (3) Those states that had legislated State Board Policies related to multicultural education were more multiculturalized; (4) There was no significance between ethnic composition of teacher education faculty members and the extent of multicultural education within teacher education programs.Education, College o