Student Teachers’ Perceptions of Multicultural Education Based on Their Social Media Use

Abstract

Social media, together with the technological advances, bring a different dimension to the intercultural communication and shape the cultural perspectives and perceptions of individuals. It is seen as an important requirement that student teachers, who will take responsibility for the educational processes that include different cultural structures, should be sensitive to and informed about cultural differences. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the effects of using social media environments on student teachers’ perceptions regarding different cultures. This paper evaluates the perceptions of student teachers regarding multicultural education with respect to their use of social media environments. The study was carried out with 2152 senior student teachers from the education faculties of 10 state universities from each geographical region of Turkey in the fall semester of 2016-2017 academic year. In the study, inferential statistical approach was used to analyze the collected data. The results of the study indicated that the student teachers’ perceptions regarding the outcomes of multicultural education showed a statistically significant difference in terms of their purpose of using social media sites. In addition, the student teachers’ perceptions regarding the influence of university education on multicultural education showed a statistically significant difference in terms of the most frequently used social media site, while their perceptions regarding equality and justice showed a statistically significant difference with respect to the most frequently used social media site as well as with respect to the purpose of using social media sites.