Teaching Anti-Bias Curriculum in Teacher Education Programs: What and How (Report)

One goal educators have is to empower students at all levels in this diverse and changing society whether they work with teacher candidates or with P-12 students. Teachers are seeing increased differences in race, ethnicity, culture, and special needs in children in their classrooms (Corso, Santos, & Roof, 2002; Ladson-Billings, 2005; North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1998). The changing composition of early childhood classrooms challenges educators to be more responsive to the diverse needs of all children. Therefore, implementing a curriculum that is culturally responsive and inclusive to assist children's needs is imperative (Gay, 2002; Hein, 2004). To prepare teacher candidates to integrate anti-bias or diversity curriculum with the regular curriculum then becomes a crucial goal of every teacher preparation program (Van Hook, 2002; Wasson & Jackson, 2002). Unfortunately, many teachers currently in the classroom report that they feel inadequate to teach multicultural or anti-bias curriculum (Au & Blake, 2003; Ukpokodu, 2004). "Most teachers admit they have had little or no training at all to work with culturally diverse children and lack the necessary pedagogical strategies to enable them to obtain good results with these students" (Aguado, Ballesteros, & Malik, 2003, p. 58). The national survey data revealed that while more than 54 % of teachers taught students who were either culturally diverse or had limited English proficiency and 71 % taught students with disabilities, only 20 % of these teachers felt they were very well prepared to meet their needs. Eighty percent of teachers indicated that they were not well prepared for many of the challenges of the classroom (Parsad, Lewis & Farris, 2001). For this reason, university and college courses should be tailored to provide teacher candidates the skills and content needed to meet the needs of a diverse classroom.