Malaysian student teachers' responses to multicultural literature

The need for classroom instruction and materials that reflect students who come from different cultural and linguistic background is important in a country with a multiethnic population. The purpose of this study is to investigate how student teachers respond to literary texts that are about their own culture and literary texts that are about the culture of others. This study also seeks to determine student teachers' knowledge about multicultural literature, why it is important to use multicultural literature, and how they should use this literature in English classrooms.;The three theoretical backgrounds for this study are the concept of multicultural literature, the reader response theory and the concept of intertextuality. Multicultural literature can be defined as writing that reflects the customs, beliefs, and experiences of people of differing nationalities and races. Reader response theory is the creative act of intermingling between a reader and texts and the transaction of readers' experiences with the texts that they read. Intertextuality is a process of making connections or links between current text and past texts, the transposition of one or several texts into other text.;Participants of this study were drawn from student teachers enrolled in the Bachelor of Education (TESL) program at a university in Malaysia. Four reading selections from authors of different cultural backgrounds were used to elicit responses from participants and survey items were used to measure their knowledge about multicultural literature.;Results from this study revealed that there is significant relationship between the scores of student teachers, their levels of responses and intertextual links that they made and their cultural background in reading multicultural literature. There is also significant difference between the mean scores and students' cultural background in responding to multicultural literary texts. Results from survey items showed that participants in this study were not well informed about the definition of multicultural literature, and why and how they should use this literary genre in English classrooms. This study suggests that teachers should use more literary texts that reflect students' cultural background and comprehension questions that enhance students' ability to make connections between reading materials and their experiences. This study also suggests that multicultural literature courses be introduced in teacher education programs in a country with a multiethnic population.