Teacher preparedness for multicultural/anti-racist education : a case study of the professional development programme at Simon Fraser University

Abstract

In this thesis I examine Multicultural/Anti-Racist (MCAR) teacher education in the Professional Development Programme (PDP) at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. The thesis is concerned with the institutional milieu in which MCAR teacher education operates, its limitations, and with the national, regional and theoretical context for MCAR teacher education in Canada and British Columbia.

I sought to ascertain: 1) how the institutional and organizational characteristics of the PDP influence MCAR teacher education at the formal and less than formal levels; 2) the philosophical perspectives on MCAR teacher education held in the faculty; and 3) the degree to which these perspectives are apparent in individual teaching practices. I also sought to make apparent barriers to further development of MCAR teacher education.

I employ research methods from the alternative tradition to evaluation research. My choice of techniques was guided by ethnographic research in general and by the work of Parlett and Hamilton (1972) specifically. The data collection strategies include interviews, participant observation, document analysis and questionnaires. The thesis is organised in four parts: 1) an analytical framework; 2) the contexts and presentation of data; 3) a discussion and an analysis of the findings, and 4) the summary and conclusion.

I found MCAR teacher education at SFU to function within Lynch's (1986a) ad-hoc multicultural level and Baptiste and Baptiste's (1980) process-oriented level. MCAR teacher education in the PDP has been given a marginal status and is not infused throughout programme offerings. The three formal MCAR activities which do exist are: 1) a full semester undergraduate course available to a limited number of students; 2) a dedicated PDP teacher education module which offers approximately twenty-five hours of MCAR instruction and has very limited enrolments; and 3) the occasional or episodic teacher education workshop or seminar.

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