Pre-service Teachers’ Awareness about Cultural Diversity in Educational Settings and their Readiness to Teach Culturally Diverse Students: The Case of Bahir Dar University

Abstract

 Preparing pre-service-teachers to teach students from different cultural backgrounds has become an issue that concerns many researchers and educators. This article examines pre-service teachers‟ awareness about cultural diversity in educational settings and their readiness to teach culturally diverse students. Bahir Dar University was the research setting and teacher educators and students (pre-service teachers) of the faculty of education were taken as the research participants. The necessary data was generated using interview, questionnaire and document review. The result revealed that pre-service teachers were hardly aware of cultural diversity in educational settings. The professional education courses contained virtually negligible proportion of issues of cultural diversity and were inefficient in preparing pre-service teachers to teach culturally diverse students. It was also found that, for different reasons, pre-service teachers do not seem to be competent and ready to teach culturally diverse students. To alleviate such problems, multicultural education should be incorporated in the teacher education programs. Moreover, to prepare culturally responsive teachers who are competent to teach culturally diverse students, teacher education institutes should not merely focus on teaching about cultural diversity in educational setting but also they should advocate cultural diversity in their everyday activities.