sleeter preparing teachers for culturally diverse schools

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Journal of Teacher Education

DOI: 10.1177/0022487101052002002 2001; 52; 94 Journal of Teacher Education

Christine E. Sleeter Whiteness

Preparing Teachers for Culturally Diverse Schools: Research and the Overwhelming Presence of

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Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 52, No. 2, March/April 2001Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 52, No. 2, March/April 2001

PREPARING TEACHERS FORCULTURALLY DIVERSE SCHOOLSRESEARCH AND THE OVERWHELMING PRESENCE OF WHITENESS

Christine E. SleeterCalifornia State University, Monterey Bay

This article reviews data-based research studies on preservice teacher preparation for multiculturalschools, particularly schools that serve historically underserved communities. In this article, theauthor reviews 80 studies of effects of various preservice teacher education strategies, including re-cruiting and selecting students, cross-cultural immersion experiences, multicultural educationcoursework, and program restructuring. Although there is a large quantity of research, very little ofit actually examines which strategies prepare strong teachers. Most of the research focuses on ad-dressing the attitudes and lack of knowledge of White preservice students. This review argues thatalthough this is a very important problem that does need to be addressed, it is not the same as figur-ing out how to populate the teaching profession with excellent multicultural and culturally respon-sive teachers.

It is widely recognized that the cultural gap be-tween children in the schools and teachers islarge and growing. In 1996, the enrollment inpublic elementary and secondary schools was64% White, 17% Black, 14% Hispanic, 4% Asian/Pacific Islander, and 1% American Indian/Alas-kan Native (National Center for Education Sta-tistics, 1999). In contrast, the teaching force in1994 was 87% non-Hispanic White, 7% Black,4% Hispanic, 1% Asian/Pacific Islander, and1% American Indian/Alaskan Native. Thirty-nine percent of teachers had students with lim-ited English proficiency in their classrooms, butonly one quarter of those teachers had receivedtraining for working with them (U.S. Depart-ment of Education, 1997).

Education in many communities of color, aswell as many poor White communities, is in astate of crisis. Students are learning far too little,becoming disengaged, and dropping out athigh rates. Far too few students are going on tocollege. As a teacher educator, I am often askedwhat preservice education can do. I have plenty

of ideas based on years of experience butdecided to examine what the research is saying.When I reviewed research studies on teachereducation for multicultural education 15 yearsago (Sleeter, 1985), there was little to review.Today there is a sizable body. For this review, Ifocused on published data-based research stud-ies that examine the preparation of teachers forschools that serve historically underserved,multicultural student populations. Alonger dis-cussion of how the research was framed can befound elsewhere (Sleeter, in press).

THE PROBLEM

Students of color tend to bring richer experi-ences and perspectives to multicultural teach-ing than do most White students, who dominatenumerically. Several studies document this pat-tern, which has tremendous implications forteacher education.

A large proportion of White preservice stu-dents anticipate working with children of

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Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 52, No. 2, March/April 2001 94-106© 2001 by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education



another cultural background. As a whole, how-ever, they bring very little cross-cultural back-ground, knowledge, and experience (Barry &Lechner, 1995; Gilbert, 1995; Larke, 1990; Law &Lane, 1987; McIntyre, 1997; Schultz, Neyhart, &Reck, 1996; R. Smith, Moallem, & Sherrill, 1997;Su, 1996, 1997; Valli, 1995). For example, Schultzet al. (1996) found that preservice student teach-ers are fairly naïve and have stereotypic beliefsabout urban children, such as believing thaturban children bring attitudes that interferewith education. Most White preservice studentsbring little awareness or understanding of dis-crimination, especially racism (Avery & Walker,1993; King, 1991; Su, 1996, 1997). Su (1996, 1997)found that White preservice students interpretsocial change as meaning almost any kind ofchange except changing structural inequalities,and many regard programs to remedy racialdiscrimination as discriminatory againstWhites. White preservice students tend to usecolorblindness as a way of coping with fear andignorance (McIntyre, 1997; Valli, 1995). Theseproblems carry over into the classroom.Preservice students tend to have limited visionsof multicultural teaching (Goodwin, 1994) as atechnical issue and multicultural curriculum asmainly additions to the existing curriculum(Vavrus, 1994). Furthermore, many preserviceas well as in-service teachers are ambivalentabout their ability to teach African Americanchildren, and their feelings of efficacy seem todecline from the preservice to the in-servicestage (Pang & Sablan, 1998).

Preservice students of color bring a richermulticultural knowledge base to teacher educa-tion than do White students. Students of colorgenerally are more committed to multiculturalteaching, social justice, and providing childrenof color with an academically challenging cur-riculum (Ladson-Billings, 1991; Rios & Monte-cinos, 1999; Su, 1996, 1997). Preservice studentsof color do not necessarily bring more knowl-edge about pedagogical practices than do Whitepreservice students, however (Goodwin, 1997;Montecinos, 1994); both groups need well-designed preservice teacher education.

Predominantly White institutions have gen-erally responded very slowly to the growingcultural gap. According to a survey of 19 Mid-west Holmes Group teacher preparation pro-grams, 94% of their faculty and students wereAnglo (Fuller, 1992). Only 56% of these institu-tions required elementary education students tocomplete a multicultural education course; oneinstitution did not even offer such a course.Preservice students generally were placed infield experiences “reminiscent of their child-hood” (p. 192). A large proportion of teachers ofcolor have been prepared by historically Blackinstitutions. V. L. Clark (1987), for example,wrote that as of the mid 1980s, “even though thehistorically black institutions [HBIs] only repre-sent 5% of the institutions of higher education,the HBIs have produced 66% of the black teach-ers in the United States” (p. 86). He argued thatpredominantly White institutions need to help.

Several case studies have examined predomi-nantly White teacher education programs thatdo “business as usual” (Cannella & Reiff, 1994;Davis, 1995; Grant & Koskela, 1986; Parker &Hood, 1995; Weiner, 1990). On a superficiallevel, many White preservice students in theseprograms initially showed receptivity towardlearning about diversity. The programs them-selves provided disjointed multicultural con-tent, dependent on the interests of individualprofessors. By the time they student taught, thepreservice students were concerned mainlyabout surviving in the classroom. Those in pri-marily White schools had subordinated anyinterest in multicultural education to demandsof their cooperating teachers. Those in urbanschools were completely unprepared for thestudents and the setting and had great diffi-culty. Parker and Hood (1995) found that stu-dents of color in such programs are very criticalof this superficial treatment of diversity.Although they brought life experiences theycould draw on to construct multicultural peda-gogy, their programs were not designed toextend what they already knew, nor to preparetheir White peers to teach in schools like thosewith which the students of color were familiar.

Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 52, No. 2, March/April 2001 95



The research reviewed in the remainder ofthis article provides no clear guidance aboutwhat to do in preservice education. This is a lim-itation of the research that has been done thusfar rather than an indication that interventionsare not needed. Continuing business as usual inpreservice teacher education will only continueto widen the gap between teachers and childrenin schools. Certainly research can help to informpractice; as I point out in this review, theresearch that exists currently is piecemeal.

Preservice programs take two rather differentlines of action to address the cultural gap be-tween teachers and children in the school:(a) bring into the teaching profession more teach-ers who are from culturally diverse communi-ties and (b) try to develop the attitudes andmulticultural knowledge base of predominantlyWhite cohorts of preservice students. Althoughthese are not mutually exclusive, they differ inwhat they emphasize.

RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION OFPRESERVICE STUDENTS

Preservice teacher education programs use atleast two strategies to alter the mix of whobecomes teachers. One strategy is to recruit andprepare many more prospective teachers ofcolor. The literature contains numerous descrip-tions of such programs (Becket, 1998; Brennan &Bliss, 1998; Dillard, 1994; Littleton, 1998; Love &Greer, 1995; Shade, Boe, Garner, & New, 1998;Torres-Karna & Krustchinsky, 1998; Yopp,Yopp, & Taylor, 1992) but little follow-upresearch of their impact on schools. For exam-ple, Shade et al. (1998) described EC3, an alter-native teacher certification program for pro-spective teachers of color, created throughcollaboration between two higher educationinstitutions. The program successfully certifiedthree cohorts of a total of 49 teachers of color.Although the articles above are all programdescriptions, not studies of program effective-ness, they do demonstrate that it is possible torecruit and prepare many more teachers of colorthan we do currently.

Another strategy to alter the mix of who be-comes teachers is to recruit and select only thosewho bring experiences, knowledge, and dispo-

sitions that will enable them to teach well in cul-turally diverse urban schools. MartinHaberman (1996) has been the leading advocateand developer of this strategy. He argues thaturban teachers succeed or fail based on whatthey bring to teaching more than on what theylearn in a preservice program. His observationsof star urban teachers identified seven mainattributes they share (Haberman, 1995).Preservice students who bring these attributesgenerally are older (30 to 50 years of age), are ofcolor, are from an urban area, have raised chil-dren and held other jobs, and have learned tolive normally in a somewhat violent context(Haberman, 1996). Haberman argues that thebest way to prepare successful urban teachers isto select candidates who bring those attributes,then prepare them pedagogically in urbanschools. He has found that one can predict notonly who will succeed in urban schools but alsothe degree to which they will succeed in theclassroom using attributes of star urban teach-ers as predictive criteria (Haberman, 1993).

Haberman’s research suggests that teachereducation programs could potentially recruitand select many more preservice teachers whobring knowledge, experiences, commitments,and dispositions that will enable them to learnto teach culturally diverse student populationswell. Although most research in multiculturalteacher education examines how to prepareWhite preservice teachers, much more can bedone to bring into the profession teachers whoculturally match the children in the schools.Further research on the impact of alternativeselection and recruitment processes is needed.

COMMUNITY-BASED CROSS-CULTURALIMMERSION EXPERIENCES

Community-based cross-cultural immersionprograms are those in which teacher educa-tion students actually live in communities thatare culturally different from their own whilethey are learning to teach. Several White educa-tors have written autobiographically about howthey learned to teach cross-culturally and em-phasized the power of community-based learn-ing (Sleeter, 1996; G. P. Smith, 1998; Weiner, 1993;Yeo, 1997). Yeo (1997), for example, described

96 Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 52, No. 2, March/April 2001



how he learned from students and communitymembers in an inner-city school. His teacherpreparation program was irrelevant to urbanteaching; as a new teacher, he discovered that heneeded to put that training aside and learn to lis-ten to inner-city students and residents.Merryfield (2000) reported similar stories in herstudy of life histories of White teacher educatorswho lived for a time outside their own country.Conclusions based on these personal narrativeshave support in other forms of research.

Indiana University has several cross-culturalimmersion projects that have been studiedmainly through follow-up surveys of gradu-ates. The projects include the American IndianReservation Project in the Navajo Nation, theHispanic Community Project in the lower RioGrande Valley, the Urban Project in Indianapo-lis, and the Overseas Project. The semester priorto their immersion experience, students com-plete an intensive preparatory course. Duringthe immersion experience, they have ongoingsubstantive community involvement, as well asstudent teaching. A survey of graduates of theAmerican Indian Reservation Project reportedthat it made a positive impact on their attitudes,knowledge, and employability in Native as wellas non-Native schools (Mahan, 1982). In a shortqualitative study of that project, Melnick andZeichner (1996) concurred, finding “much evi-dence of student teachers making efforts to con-nect their classrooms to community people,practices, and values, even when cooperatingteachers did not support these practices” (p. 185).A follow-up survey of the Overseas Project re-ported similar positive findings (Mahan &Stachowski, 1990). In two additional follow-upsurveys, a large number of preservice studentsreported that community people were highlysignificant sources of learning (Mahan & Stac-howski, 1993-1994; Stachowski & Mahan, 1998).

Small-scale studies have examined otherimmersion programs (Aguilar & Pohan, 1998;Canning, 1995; Cooper, Beare, & Thorman, 1990;Marxen & Rudney, 1999; Noordhoff & Kleinfeld,1993). All reported considerable learning, andauthors emphasized the value of cross-culturalimmersion projects and the power of learningfrom the community. For example, Cooper et al.

(1990) compared 18 preservice students fromMinnesota who had student taught in the RioGrande Valley in Texas with 85 who had con-ventional student teaching placements inMinnesota. On all measures, such as reportedcomfort discussing racial or ethnic issues,expectations for students of diverse racial back-grounds, and willingness to visit students’ fam-ilies, those who had student taught in Texasscored higher. Noordhoff and Kleinfeld (1993)studied the impact of Teachers for Alaska on pre-service students’ teaching practice. They video-taped students teaching short lessons threetimes during the program and found that stu-dents shifted dramatically from teaching as tell-ing to teaching as engaging students with sub-ject matter, using culturally relevant knowledge.

When community-based immersion experi-ences are studied, researchers generally report apowerful impact, although much of the data arebased on very small projects. When White edu-cators describe their own learning, community-based experiences are also often extremelyimportant and in some cases much more impor-tant than their formal teacher education pro-grams. The researchers mentioned here attributestudents’ learning to the power of community-based, cross-cultural contexts in which theyhave to grapple with being in the minority, donot necessarily know how to act, and are tempo-rarily unable to retreat to the comfort of a cultur-ally familiar setting. Community-based immer-sion experiences require a good deal of work toorganize and operate, however, and convincingothers that such experiences should be a part ofteacher education is difficult without a strongerresearch base. How long does an immersionproject need to be? What kinds of settings workbest? What impact does an immersion experi-ence have on a teacher when he or she enters theprofession? These are questions that need to beaddressed through research.

MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION COURSEWORK

Many teacher preparation programs haveadded coursework in multicultural education,teaching the urban child, teaching English lan-guage learners, or some variation of these. Agood deal of research examines student learn-




ing in these courses from various angles, focus-ing mainly on how or whether they change howpredominantly White preservice studentsthink. This review includes studies of stand-alone courses, as well as courses that includefield experience.

Stand-Alone MulticulturalEducation Courses

In the past few years, many faculty membershave written about their own courses, reportingeither action research or reflective analyses. Forthe most part, they examine teaching strategiesthat raise awareness about issues related to raceand/or culture among predominantly Whiteclasses of students. Action research case studiesuse as data student papers, student reflectivejournals, and/or interviews with students. Inmany cases, the author is the instructor of thecourse. Teaching strategies that have been ex-amined include using autobiography (C. Clark& Medina, 2000; Florio-Ruane, 1994; Xu, 2000),engaging students in a mail cultural exchangewith others in very different cultural contexts(Fuller & Ahler, 1987), using a simulation of un-equal opportunity (Frykholm, 1997), teachingabout White privilege (Lawrence, 1997; Law-rence & Bunche, 1996), and engaging studentsin debate (Marshall, 1998). All of these teachingstrategies seem to raise students’ awarenessabout race, culture, and discrimination.

Many narratives reflect on the work that goesinto making an impact on White preservice stu-dents in multicultural education courses (e.g.,Larkin & Sleeter, 1995; Martin, 1995). There issome overlap between action research casestudies and narrative research; the formeremphasizes data collection more than the latter,whereas the latter may reflect on experiencemore than the former. For example, Ahlquist(1991) explored her predominantly White stu-dents’ resistance to awareness raising aboutrace. She contrasted her own sense of urgencyabout preparing teachers to grapple with racewith her students’ lack of background informa-tion about the issue. She argued for a need toteach in a way that allows students to reflect anddigest in order to move forward. Thoughtful

narratives that grow from and examine exten-sive experience help readers to see the basis onwhich experienced educators make recommen-dations or take action (e.g., Cochran-Smith,2000). Narrative essays vary widely in degree ofreflection and use of experience, however, andas a result can be criticized as substituting opin-ion and selective perception for data. The fieldneeds more discussion of how to evaluate andinterpret narrative research.

Most of the small-scale case studies and re-flective narratives suggest strategies that makean impact on students, but a few critique course-work that is counterproductive. McDiarmid(1992), for example, studied a multiculturalstrand in Los Angeles Unified School District–based teacher certification training, whichincluded 15 sessions on background informa-tion and pedagogical techniques for workingwith culturally diverse students. Through inter-views with the students, he found that didacticpresentations about various groups actuallytaught stereotypes and generalizations and didlittle to change the thinking among the preser-vice students.

Studies using experimental research designsare not as optimistic in their conclusions as arecase studies and narratives; neither are they astextured. Eight used a pretest-posttest design tomeasure the effects of a multicultural educationcourse on attitudes. The great majority of theparticipants in these studies were Whitewomen. These studies reported that after acourse, students’ attitudes are generally morepositive than before (Baker, 1973, 1977; Bennett,1979; Bennett , Niggle, & Stage, 1990;Hennington, 1981; Martin & Koppelman, 1991;Rios, McDaniel, & Stowell, 1998; Tran & Young,1994). However, some studies found only smallgains (Baker, 1973, 1977). Furthermore, the onlystudy with a follow-up found that a month afterthe course, which lasted only 1 week, gains werelost (Hennington, 1981). Two more studies useda control group design to investigate the impactof coursework on students’ ability to use cultureand language to analyze a classroom case study(Guillaume, Zuniga-Hill, & Yee, 1995, 1998). Inboth, there was no difference in the quality ofresponse between the two groups.




From this research, it is difficult to say howmuch impact multicultural education courseshave on White students. Experimental studiesexamined mainly attitudes using Likert-typescales, which do not offer a very textured read-ing of what students learn. Case studies andnarratives provided more depth and detail butmay also have highlighted what the instructorsaw as working because most of these werewritten by the course instructor, who may havea bias toward discussing successes of her or hiswork. Almost none of the studies above exam-ined the impact of multicultural educationcoursework on how preservice students actu-ally teach children in the classroom. Only Law-rence (1997) subsequently followed studentsinto the classroom during their student teachingto find out how much carryover their learninghad. She found the carryover varied widely,depending on the level of racial awareness stu-dents had developed earlier.

Intuitively, it makes sense to assume thatpreservice students who are taught somethingabout culture and race will become better teach-ers in multicultural contexts than those who arenot, but the research has not been designed toinvestigate this assumption. Those who wish todo research on multicultural education coursesshould attempt to follow students into theclassroom after they finish teacher education tofind out how much impact coursework has.Furthermore, unless one is critically examiningone’s own experience, researchers studying theimpact of a particular course should take stepsto gain some distance from the course itself,by studying another instructor’s course forexample.

Multicultural Education CourseworkWith a Field Experience

Anumber of other studies examined how stu-dents experience a multicultural educationcourse that includes a field experience in aschool or community setting. In most of thesestudies, the preservice student populationswere primarily White, and a major focus of theexperience was to raise awareness.

One approach was to teach studentsethnographic research skills, then have themcomplete a research project in an urban commu-nity or school; in most cases, the communitycontexts were primarily African American(Fry & McKinney, 1997; Narode, Rennie-Hill, &Peterson, 1994; Olmedo, 1997; Ross & Smith,1992; Sleeter, 1996). Authors emphasized thatpreparation for the community research andhelp processing the experience was very impor-tant. All of these studies described conceptualgrowth among the students and greater willing-ness among many to consider working in anurban school, although some authors noted stu-dents’ reluctance to contextualize communitieswithin broader relations of power (Ross &Smith, 1992; Sleeter, 1996).

Another approach was to have preservicestudents tutor children in cultural contexts thatare not primarily White and middle-class(Aaronsohn, Carter, & Howell, 1995; Barton,1999; Boyle-Baise & Sleeter, 2000; Bullock, 1997;Lazar, 1998; Moule, in press; Murtadha-Watts,1998; Rodriguez, 1998). These case studiesdescribed insights that specific preservice stu-dents gained, including their growth in aware-ness of culture, knowledge of a context differentfrom their own, and awareness of their own ste-reotypes. For example, Lazar studied two Whitepreservice students who, over a semester andafter tutoring children and talking personallywith some of their primary caregivers, came toquestion their assumption that low-incomeAfrican American parents do not care abouttheir children’s literacy development. At thesame time, Murtadha-Watts (1998) emphasizedhow little awareness of larger issues thepreservice students had, even after the experi-ence. Many students found stereotypesdisconfirmed by the experience, but somefound confirmation of stereotypes. Morebroadly, they had little understanding of insti-tutional racism within which to contextualizethe program in which they tutored.

Pretest-posttest studies examining the effectsof a course plus a field experience on predomi-nantly White preservice students report mixedfindings. Four studies reported a positivechange (Bondy, Schmitz, & Johnson, 1993;




Grottgau & Nickolai-Mays, 1989; Mason, 1997;Wiggins & Follo, 1999). For example, Bondyet al. (1993) studied a course in which studentsexamined why poor and minority studentsperform less well in school than White, middle-class students. They also considered teachingstrategies that might break that cycle, and stu-dents tutored in public housing neighborhoods.They found that participation in the course andthe field experience together had a significantimpact. Students who completed one or theother, or neither, however, did not show gains.Authors of these studies concluded that acourse provides a support mechanism for stu-dents to interpret their tutoring experiences.

On the other hand, two studies found thatfield experience reinforced or produced morestereotypic attitudes (Haberman & Post, 1992;Reed, 1993). Haberman and Post found thatmost of the White preservice students theystudied interpreted their inner-city field experi-ence mainly through preconceptions theybrought with them. Although students com-pleted concurrent multicultural educationcoursework, its didactic pedagogical format didnot sufficiently engage them in examining theirperceptions. By the end of the experience, stu-dents felt more confident about themselves asteachers but characterized pupils with morenegative descriptions than at the beginning.

Again, intuitively it would seem that teach-ing preservice students something about cultur-ally diverse children and requiring them towork directly with children or their communi-ties would help them to become better teachers.But does it? We do not really know becausepreservice students are not usually followedinto teaching. The study that most closely exam-ines this question is one that I did several yearsago (Sleeter, 1989). I surveyed 456 teachers whohad been certified in Wisconsin between 1981and 1986 to find out how they used variousdimensions of multicultural education in theirteaching. The state requires infusion of multi-cultural course content plus a field experience.Overall, the teaching strategies teachersreported using most often were of the humanrelations variety. Teachers who had completedprograms with more than four credits in multi-

cultural education reported using multiculturalteaching strategies in the classroom more oftenthan those completing programs with less thanfour credits. However, the number of creditsthey had completed was less related to whatthey reported doing in the classroom than wasthe student population they were teaching.Teachers were more likely to incorporate multi-cultural content when their students were ofcolor and/or from low-income backgroundsthan when they were not.

It was unclear to me how much difference themulticultural education coursework and fieldexperience, in themselves, had made. Even ifpreservice students learn and grow through theexperience, are they growing enough to becomestrong teachers in culturally diverse schools?After studying what mostly White preservicestudents gained from one such course with a tu-toring field experience, Murtadha-Watts (1998)wrote the following:

The perspectives of the preservice teachers in this pi-lot program, most of whom will (regrettably) neverget opportunities early in their teaching studies toquestion and challenge their own tightly held cul-tural assumptions, are commonplace. What willhappen if the increasing numbers of teachers haveno idea about what they are doing culturally, whothey are working with, and what the students’ cir-cumstances are? Will we continue this cycle? Doesthe cycle of culturally incompetent teachers con-tinue, or can teacher educators provide other oppor-tunities for culturally responsive teaching?

INTERVENTIONS AT A PROGRAM LEVEL

Adding a course or a field experience doesnot necessarily address the rest of the program.What if programs are restructured or rede-signed in some way?

In some traditionally structured programs,faculty members have infused multiculturalcourse content and field experiences through-out. Two case studies found the impact of suchprograms limited, but for different reasons.Burstein and Cabello (1989) found that althoughstudents’ thinking over 2 years shifted awayfrom a deficiency orientation and they gainedsome strategies for motivating, teaching, andbuilding on children’s first languages, most stu-dents still struggled with deep cultural differ-




ences and belief systems about schooling.Artiles, Barreto, Peña, & McClafferty (1998)found that two graduates of such a program hadactually experienced diverse and disconnecteddiscourses while in the program: their ownprior beliefs, conflicting theoretical perspec-tives with the program (such as critical theoryvs. behaviorism), and beliefs of teachers theyinteracted with in the schools. As a result, theyput much of what they had learned in the pro-gram aside and learned to teach on the job.

School-university collaborations constitute aform of program restructuring designed to con-nect theory with practice. Three articlesreported experimental studies of such pro-grams for preparing urban teachers. Tworeported effects of Teacher Corps training onsubsequent classroom teaching behavior.Marsh (1975, 1979) compared 82 Teacher Corpsgraduates with a control group of other newlyhired teachers. He found that the Teacher Corpsgraduates did not differ from graduates in thecontrol group on most variables, including useof several instructional strategies, handlingbehavior, or acting as change agents. They weremore likely than those in the control group todevelop culturally relevant curricula, use com-munity resources in teaching and initiate con-tact with parents, and show positive attitudesabout reading development and causes of pov-erty. Pupils of Teacher Corps graduates gainedmore than pupils of control group teachers on ameasurement of self-concept, but there were nodifferences between pupil groups in readingachievement or attendance. Marsh (1979) notedthat whereas many Teacher Corps projectsemphasize cultural awareness, there is lessemphasis on specific instructional skills, whichis why its graduates’ teaching skills are no dif-ferent from those of other new teachers.Stallings and Quinn (1991) examined the effectsof the Houston Teaching Academy and foundthat its graduates used more effective teachingpractices in inner-city classrooms than gradu-ates of a traditional teacher preparation program.These three studies suggest that university-school collaboratives have the potential to teachskills that teachers will actually use in the class-room. The research did not examine whether

they accomplished any of the broader rethink-ing of schooling that is part of multiculturaleducation.

Cochran-Smith (1991) and Cochran-Smithand Lytle (1992) studied preservice studentsparticipating in school-based inquiry commu-nities that were involved in reforming cultur-ally diverse urban schools. There, teachers andpreservice students frequently talked togetherabout what it means to teach real students intheir classes well and wrestled with significantpedagogical issues. They learned to ask morecomplex questions, examine themselves moredeeply, and question how schools respond tostudent diversity. Preservice teachers experi-enced teaching against the grain (i.e., teachingin ways that the teacher believes benefit chil-dren more than predominant modes of teachingdo) as a reality rather than a university profes-sor’s vision (Cochran-Smith, 1991).

Attempts to rework whole teacher educationprograms, whether by collaborating withschools, infusing multicultural course content,or both, might improve the preparation ofteachers. There are too few data, however, toknow how well teachers in such programs learnto teach in culturally diverse schools. Certainlythe quality and nature of the experience in part-ner schools is as important to examine as is thenature of the teacher education program.Schools with strong culturally responsive teach-ers could partner well with a multiculturalteacher education program; partnershipsbetween schools and universities with predom-inantly White staffs doing business as usualwould probably produce more business asusual.

THE OVERWHELMING PRESENCEOF WHITENESS

The great bulk of the research has examinedhow to help young White preservice students(mainly women) develop the awareness, in-sights, and skills for effective teaching in multi-cultural contexts. Reading the research, onegains a sense of the immense struggle thatinvolves. For preservice students of color in pre-dominantly White programs, the overwhelm-ing presence of Whiteness can be silencing. Five




studies examined how preservice students ofcolor experience such contexts (Agee, 1998;Burant, 1999; Guyton, Saxton, & Wesche, 1996;Pailliotet, 1997; Tellez, 1999). For example,Burant (1999) examined the process throughwhich one Latina became silenced in a courseorganized around dialogue and collaborativeconstructivist work. Initially, she spoke up inclass, but she “lost her voice” after White class-mates expressed a lack of interest in multicul-tural and language issues. In predominantlyWhite programs, not only are classmates mostlyWhite, but so are professors and teachers in thefield.

I would guess that most of the authors of theresearch reviewed here—both authors of coloras well as White authors—are aware of the over-whelming presence of Whiteness in teachereducation. Some scholars have examined thisissue very insightfully with reference to theirown work (Cochran-Smith, 1995, 2000).

Because of this overwhelming presence,many teacher educators have chosen to developalternative teacher education programs for pro-spective teachers of color or for those who bringexperiences and attributes that good urbanteachers share. These alternative programs maydevelop a range of insights that do not emergewhen focusing mainly on how to prepare tradi-tional White students. For example, alternativeprograms value what students of color (who areoften recruited from the ranks of parapro-fessionals) bring, making their assets part of theselection process, and build on what theyalready know, often in highly field-based set-tings. What does a teacher education curricu-lum look like in such a program, and how welldo such programs prepare strong teachers?Research on these questions could be im-mensely valuable.

Although working to shift who becomesteachers is essential, working with White pro-spective teachers is also essential. Working toimprove White attitudes should not become adiversion from selecting and preparing the ex-cellent, culturally responsive teachers that his-torically underserved schools need. Of the vari-ous strategies that are used in teacher educationprograms, extensive community-based immer-

sion experiences, coupled with coursework,seem to have the most promise. However, astronger research base is needed to strengthenthis claim. The research suggests that commu-nity-based immersion experiences are morepowerful than stand-alone multicultural educa-tion courses, yet it is likely that the latter aremore prevalent because they are easier toinstitutionalize.

A QUEST FOR RESEARCH

I framed this review around a quest forresearch on the preparation of teachers who canteach well in schools serving communities thathave been historically underserved. This way offraming the issue draws attention to what actu-ally happens in classrooms when graduates ofteacher preparation programs begin to teach. Itis there that the fruit of our efforts has the mostimpact and there that we as teacher educatorsneed to focus our energies.

A research base on good teaching in histori-cally underserved classrooms does exist: for ex-ample, Ladson-Billings’s (1994) study ofeffective teachers of African American childrenand Reyes, Scribner, and Scribner’s (1999) col-lection of studies of high-performing Latinoschools. Research on preparing such teachers,however, is very piecemeal, predominated bysmall-scale action research studies that—al-though useful locally for program improve-ment—together produce a disjointed andsomewhat repetitious knowledge base. After re-viewing research on multicultural teacher edu-cation, Ladson-Billings (1999) commented that

despite the changing demographics that make ourpublic schools more culturally and linguistically di-verse and the growing body of knowledge on issuesof diversity and difference, multicultural teacher ed-ucation continues to suffer from a thin, poorly devel-oped, fragmented literature that provides aninaccurate picture of the kind of preparation teach-ers receive to teach in culturally diverse classrooms.(p. 114)

Research in teacher education needs to followgraduates into the classroom, and our workneeds to extend beyond preservice education,linking preservice education with commu-




nity-based learning and with ongoing profes-sional development and school reform.

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Christine E. Sleeter is the director of the Institute forAdvanced Studies in Education at California State Uni-versity, Monterey Bay, where she coordinates the master ofarts in education program. She has worked in teacher prep-aration for the past 20 years and consults nationally onmulticultural education and teacher preparation. Herpublications appear in journals such as Race, Sex andClass, Educational Researcher, and Theory Into Prac-tice. She has published several books on multiculturaleducation and is in the process of completing an e-book onCD-ROM for use in teacher education courses; it will bepublished by Teachers College Press in 2001.


