'It's so much bigger than I realized!': Identity, process, change, and possibility. Preservice teachers' beliefs about multicultural education

Developing preservice teachers' capacities for equitable practice is a major teacher preparation dilemma. Applying a limited lens, scholars have focused almost exclusively on white racial identity as the determinant frame in preservice teachers' perspectives. Relying on phenomenological and socio-cultural lenses, this project explored shifts in beliefs about multicultural education of eight white preservice teachers during their first year of teacher preparation. More precisely, I examined how identity (articulated via a range of structured positionings, biographical experiences, and subjectivity) informed the processes by which these preservice teachers made sense of multicultural education. Thus, the study not only captured the shifts in the students' beliefs, but additionally the experiences/processes of change related to these shifts, and how identity (as it might be marked by race, social-class, gender, religious, etc. positionings and subjectivities) framed these experiences.; The project employed a multiple individual case study design. Multiple data sources included in-depth individual and group interviews, course and field-placement observations, interviews with course instructors and cooperating teachers, and a collection of student artifacts.; Analysis focused on the students' beliefs regarding four components of multicultural education: their (1) general approach to multicultural education; (2) conceptualizations of culture; (3) understandings of roles/responsibilities as multicultural educators; (4) beliefs about equity/opportunity in society. Where the students' initial beliefs about these four components were largely similar across the eight cases, findings indicated three distinct categories of beliefs by the end of the first year. These categories were influenced by variation in the students' approaches to and processing of dissonant information encountered during teacher preparation. In explaining this variation, particular identity-framing background experiences emerged as salient. Like kinds of identity-framing experiences similarly shaped students' negotiation of dissonant information. In this way, the identities of the students framed how they viewed multicultural education and what they imagined as possible as multicultural educators.; These findings have implications for how multicultural teacher education is structured and highlight knowledge necessary to include in multicultural teacher-preparation. The influences of identity on students' outcomes suggest connections between identity and learning, and indicate the importance of attention to individuality of learners within teacher-preparation.