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The Urban Review

, Volume 36, Issue 2, pp 119–145 | Cite as

The Relationship of Self-Concepts to Changes in Cultural Diversity Awareness: Implications for Urban Teacher Educators

  • Elinor L. Brown
Article

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between the self-concepts and cultural diversity awareness of 100 European–American pre-service teachers. The Tennessee Self-Concept Scale:2 and the Cultural Diversity Awareness Inventory were administered as a test–retest to ascertain if changes in cultural diversity awareness occurred during a stand-alone multicultural course, and if so were they related to the study participants' pre-test self-concepts. The findings indicate that a statistically significant relationship does exist between total self-concept and total cultural diversity awareness. However, not all five components of self-concept consistently predicted the direction or magnitude of change in the five elements of cultural diversity awareness. These results imply that urban teacher educators should consider both constructs when developing intervention strategies to thwart student resistance to multicultural tenets in stand-alone cultural diversity courses.

teacher education self-concepts cultural diversity sensitivity 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2004

Authors and Affiliations

  • Elinor L. Brown
    • 1
  1. 1.College of EducationUniversity of KentuckyLexingtonUSA

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