Multicultural education: The challenges and attitudes of undergraduate students in Turkey

Abstract

Multicultural education is a process that attaches importance to the differences between students and makes no attempt to deny their existence. This ensures that the process continues in an egalitarian manner. Multicultural education is an educational reform movement that exists within the context of a wider process of societal reform and supports the principle that no inequality of educational opportunity should exist on account of differences of race, ethnicity, identity or social class. The purpose of this study is to identify the views of undergraduate students concerning multicultural education. In this regard, the attitudes of undergraduate students at school of education were examined to see if there existed significant differences in their views taking the moderating variables of the students' gender, ethnic identity, type of university (private or state) and type of department into account. In this study, a quantitative research method was used, employing the Mann Whitney U Test and Kruskal Wallis H Test analysis within the analysis process. A scale was developed to collect data for the study. The scale was divided into 3 different factors or categories. These were defined as the results of multicultural education, the effect of university education on multicultural education, and education and justice. The results of this study indicated that college students' responses on multicultural education were largely positive.