Tolerance in Teacher Education: Restructuring the Curriculum in a Diverse but Segregated University Classroom

Many teachers teach undergraduate and graduate teacher education courses that include a cultural hodgepodge of future teachers who differ not only in ethnicity, but in age, sexual preference, religion, language, and a host of other microcultural areas. Occasionally it is clear within the first couple of class sessions that these groups are reluctant to interact with one another in any format. In these instances, those few cliques that could possibly develop do so early on and class discussions may be almost nonexistent at the outset of the courses. In later discussions teachers witness angry encampments of student groups lashing out at one another. In this article, the authors attempt at bringing diverse and segregated class groups together in some sense of understanding and respect for one another through a restructured, reconceptualized, multicultural curriculum. After all, these very groups of non-cooperative students will very soon be serving as teachers in schools across the United States and will need to develop the skills necessary to foster multicultural tolerance among their own students. (Contains 2 figures.)