[Introduction]
Today, when students' cultural diversity is increasing, teachers are required to have sensitivity and competency to respond to diversity. The more teachers pay attention to students' diversity and respond favorably, the safer they feel ...
[Introduction]
Today, when students' cultural diversity is increasing, teachers are required to have sensitivity and competency to respond to diversity. The more teachers pay attention to students' diversity and respond favorably, the safer they feel to interact with teachers and colleagues, express themselves, realize themselves, and grow. Teachers' sensitivity and effective response to diversity not only directly benefit students, but also act as a model for students, which has an indirect effect of growing up to be adults with sensitivity and responsiveness to diversity. Teachers' sensitivity and responsiveness to diversity are not developed by themselves. In particular, Korean teachers have been trained to complete the curriculum of elementary, middle, high schools, and college of education, find and comply with the "answer" set by the curriculum while preparing for the teacher selection exam. Schools have a strong entrance examination-oriented, infinite competition, and winner-centered climate. Teachers who have "successfully" adapted to this mainstream culture had few opportunities to receive training to be tolerant, sensitive, and appropriate to diversity.
In order to develop teachers' sensitivity and responsiveness to diversity, they must repeat the practice of insight, consciousness, cognitive analysis, and choosing action plans from teachers' daily life experiences reflecting the reality of interaction between various minority and mainstream cultural groups. Rather than doing this process alone, transformational learning should be carried out through discussion activities, reflection activities, and behavioral practices that promote interaction with others. Only then can the ability to respond sensitively to the diversity they encounter unexpectedly while dealing with students in their daily life and to use appropriate responses be strengthened. So, this research was conducted to enhance teachers' sensitivity to diversity and strengthen their ability to respond by raising and solving the following research problems.
[Research Questions]
1. How do teachers experience diversity in the school field and how do they respond to diversity experiences?
2. How can the elements of teachers' sensitivity and responsiveness to diversity be structured?
3. What is the composition and effect of the program to improve teachers' sensitivity and responsiveness to diversity?
[Research contents]
The first year's study focused on solving research question 1, and mainly conducted interviews to understand the cultural diversity that teachers experience in the school. To this end, based on literature research, a semi-structured interview questionnaire was organized to explore the cultural diversity of teachers, and interviews were conducted with 30 elementary, middle, and high school teachers. Among them, data analyzing the interview results for elementary school female teachers were published as academic journals(Lim, 2019), and academic journal papers are being written while conducting additional interviews on other interview materials.
※ Lim, E. M. (2019). A narrative study on teachers’ cultural diversity experience: Focused on female teachers in elementary schools. The Journal of Korean Teacher Education, 36(2), 205-232.
The second year's study focused on solving research problem 2, and developed a teacher's cultural diversity-related scale by collecting and analyzing existing measures related to teacher's cultural diversity based on the research process and result data in the first year. As a result, ‘Development and validation of the teachers’ multicultural social justice competency scale (Lim, 2021)’ and ‘Adaptation and validation study of the Teacher Cultural Beliefs Scale (TCBS) for Korean teachers(Lee, Bang, Ko, & Lim, 2019) were published.
※ Lee, C. H., Bang, S. O., Ko, S. H., & Lim, E. M. (2019). Adaptation and validation study of the Teacher Cultural Beliefs Scale (TCBS) for Korean teachers. The Journal of Korean Teacher Education, 36(3), 479-504.
※ Lim, E. M. (2021). Development and validation of the teachers’ multicultural social justice competency scale. The Journal of Multicultural Society, 14(1), 217-252.
The third year's study focused on developing and implementing programs to improve teachers' sensitivity and responsiveness to diversity based on the first and second years' studies. The program was designed based on the research results obtained in the first and second years of research and the literature analysis results obtained in the research process. The multi session programs conducted to 30 elementary and secondary teachers aimed at monitoring their sensitivity and responsiveness to diversity, enhancing their sensitivity to diversity, and improving their responsiveness to diversity, and analyzing the results. Currently, research results are being analyzed to contribute academic journals.
[How to use and Outcome]
The results of this study will be used as a pre-post test of the teacher's cultural diversity competency enhancement program, providing information on the field teacher's cultural diversity experience. In addition, the program developed in this study is expected to be used in the field as a program to improve cultural diversity response competencies for teachers.