ELEMENT STATEMENT: Preservice education students are taught various procedures by which they can gain information about the communities represented in their future classrooms.

THE BIG PICTURE: While prospective teachers should develop an understanding of culture and its widespread implications for education, it is also crucial that they learn about their future students as individuals within the context of the communities from which they come. Villegas (1992) notes:

"The behavior of culturally different students must be understood by educators in terms of the norms of the community in which the children are reared, rather than as deviations from the norms of the white middle class." (p. 5)

Authentic learning about the cultural backgrounds of students can take place only beyond the walls of the teacher education classroom. When preservice students accumulate knowledge about cultural groups strictly through traditional academic means, negative side effects often occur. Stereotypic thinking may be exacerbated, and differences may be rationalized by reference to views of cultural deprivation (Zeichner, 1993).

In contrast, when prospective teachers engage in ethnographic inquiry into the communities from which their students come, they glean an understanding of children's lived realities. Opportunities abound for the growth of insight, which has potentially profound implications for the cultural authentication of classroom practice.

GOALS:

• Teacher educators will emphasize the importance of ethnographic inquiry in helping preservice students learn about the cultures and communities of their future classrooms.

• Teacher educators will suggest means by which preservice students can gain competence in conducting ethnographic inquiry.

IMPLICATIONS FOR ACTION: Villegas (1992) suggests several means by which prospective teachers can gain culturally grounded knowledge about their students. These suggestions include: conducting home visits, conferring with community members, talking with parents and teachers from diverse cultures, and "observing children in and out of school to discern patterns of behavior that may be related to their cultural backgrounds" (p. 8). Additional ethnographic strategies include interviewing children and international college students and attending community events.

Reflection on such experiences enhances the possibility that insight will occur. Reflection becomes a formal component of multicultural teacher education when preservice students are required to write reports detailing the findings of their investigations and to address how preconceptions have changed as a result of ethnographic experiences. Such assignments may be structured into classroom or clinical coursework, or both, and they may be conducted individually or in collaborative teams.

Hollins (1996) proposes a framework by which prospective teachers can participate in ethnographic inquiry related to their students' cultural backgrounds and interpret data in light of their own belief systems. She calls this approach reflective-interpretive-inquiry (RIQ) and defines it as "a process of systematic inquiry and analysis that will help [teachers] compile and examine information that supports understanding the relationship among culture, cognition, and school learning" (p. 11). RIQ contains seven categories of inquiry:

• teacher beliefs about students
• teacher beliefs about instruction
• the social context of instruction
• students' experiential background
• ethnic and cultural groups
• the local community
• societal context

Hollins (1996) suggests the use of specific questions for reflective-interpretive-inquiry in Culture in School Learning: Revealing the Deep Meaning. She details the extended process of RIQ and also suggests relevant learning experiences and sources for critical reading.

OBSTACLES TO ACTION: When conducted properly, ethnographic inquiry takes copious amounts of time. Thus, in designing class assignments, teacher educators may need to consider the relative merit of requiring ethnographic inquiry versus more traditional assignments.

Further, ethnography requires an understanding of appropriate methodologies and means of analyzing and interpreting data. The best-case scenario for facilitating this understanding among preservice students is for teacher educators themselves to be well-versed in qualitative methodologies. In the absence of experience with ethnographic inquiry, teacher educators may wish to refer to several of the resources listed in Additional Reading for Element 8.

DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW: Some educators agree with the principles of ethnographic inquiry but voice concerns about how the collected data will be applied. Boyle-Baise and Sleeter (1996) note that preservice students need guidance in suspending their assumptions, tuning in to the perspectives and experiences of others, and interpreting their findings. Teitelbaum and Britzman (1991) note that preservice students must be cautioned not to make generalizations based on the ethnographic data that they collect.

References

Additional Reading for Element 8