Multicultural Teacher Education Courses Are Not Designed for All Pre-service Teachers: An African American Student Teacher's Perspective.

This study explored the perspective of an African American preservice teacher (PST) with respect to a variety of issues related to human diversity in education in a multicultural education course, entitled Education for a Pluralistic Society (EPS), at a large Midwestern university. The researcher observed and conducted in-depth interviews for a full semester with a 20-year African American male, majoring in elementary education. The study identified four major factors that contributed to his apathy about the EPS course. The four factors are: EPS White-centered curriculum, minority status and silence, false definition of African American culture, and absence of praxis. This paper spotlights the weaknesses of multicultural teacher education courses from the perspective of an African American PST. His views of the course are largely corroborated in a focus group and by another African American PST enrolled in a different section of that course taught by a different instructor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]