Qualification Perception of Prospective Teachers on Multicultural Education: A Need Assessment

The aim of this study is to determine the needs of prospective teachers for multicultural education. Convergent parallel design, which is of the mixed research methods, has been employed in the study. The sample of the study has been selected by simple sampling method and constitutes of 165 prospective teachers who are studying at Afyon Kocatepe University Faculty of Education during 2016-2017 academic year.The quantitative data of the study have been collected by ‘Perception on Multicultural Education and Democracy Scale’, the qualitative data have been collected open ended questions created by the researchers. In the analysis of the quantitative data, descriptive statistics, Mann Whtney-U and Kruskall Wallis have been employed and the content analysis method has been used for the analysis of qualitative data. It has been concluded that the prospective teachers explain the multicultural education only on its cultural dimension and that they have inadequate knowledge in the field of multicultural education and that they need an education about multicultural education.


Instruction
The culture of a society is the result of the interaction of individuals in that society. Individuals with different characteristics in society constitute the subcultures and they can influence each other. In our age, the interaction with different cultures of other societies is increasing with such a cultural interaction in a society. The use of new communication technologies such as computer, period of time and the practices carried out in the field and the interactions of teachers with the teachers should be taken into consideration (Téllez, 2008). In order to develop a multicultural understanding in teacher education, it is stated that pre-service teachers are provided with various experiences and are able to reflect on different topics, and they can be offered an environment where teachers and instructors support them (Krummel, 2013).Furthermore,  emphasize that teacher candidates should be informed about multicultural education and that multicultural education can be given in some courses. Oksuz, Demir and Adem (2016) also emphasize the necessity of teaching multicultural education in the faculties of education and state that multicultural education subjects should be given as a course in order to enable the multicultural education concept to be widely disseminated. It is considered important to raise awareness of teacher candidates' multicultural education dimensions (Tortop, 2014). However, in their research, Coban, Karaman and Dogan (2010) stated that prospective teachers' perspectives towards differences were positive but that teacher candidates did not receive any training for the regulation of multicultural learning environments. Bulut (2015) concluded that prospective teachers' attitudes towards multicultural education are lower than teachers. It is stated that prospective teachers do not have enough skills to teach in multicultural learning environments (Kaya, 2014). These studies indicate that prospective teachers' competencies towards multicultural education should be determined and developed and more research should be done on this subject. When the literature has been revised, it has been concluded that the studies on multicultural education are mostly on attitude (Damgaci and Aydin, 2013;Ozdemir and Dil, 2013;Yazici, Basol and Toprak, 2009); competence and perception (Basarir and Cetin, 2014;Demir and Basarir, 2013;Basarir, 2012;Bozkurt, Eski and Alci, 2012); scale development studies (Apay, 2011;Basbay and Kagnici, 2011;Yavuz and Anil, 2010;Toprak, 2008). When the studies conducted for the prospective teachers are examined, they are mostly on prospective teachers' character about multicultural education (Polat, 2009); their attitude and beliefs Coskun, 2012); their perspectives (Celik, 2011); their perception (Unlu and Orten, 2013), competences (Kaya, 2014;Polat ve Kilic, 2013). There is no study to determine the needs of prospective teachers for multicultural education. However, it is undoubt that the world is getting smaller and smaller day by day. The people mobility is at an unprecedented level. It not only affect the demographic structures of the society, it also reshape the student characteristic. The teachers face with a variety of students from different culture, race, religion and even with the students who speak a different language. It creates some problems fort he teachers such as classroom management problems, deciding and using teaching techniques. Hence, it is essential that the teachers need to know how to tackle all of this thing in a classroom and reach the success in their practices. For this reason, it is necessary to determine the needs of prospective teachers for multicultural education. Based on these requirements, this study aims to analyze the needs of prospective teachers in order to determine their perceptions about multicultural education and their educational needs. In this context, the following research question has been formed:  What are the educational needs and perceptions of prospective teachers for multicultural education?

Research Problem
In this study which aims to determine the prospective teachers' educational needs for multicultural education, the following research problems have been created: 1. What is the level of the prospective teachers' perceptions of multicultural education and democracy? 2. Does the level of multicultural education and democracy perception of prospective teachers' differ significantly in terms of gender, the departments they study in and education for multicultural education? 3. What is the perception of prospective teachers about the concept of multiculturalism? 4. What is the perception of prospective teachers regarding the concept of multicultural education? 5. How do prospective teachers perceive their ability to support multicultural education in the classroom? 6. What is the perception of prospective teachers about their knowledge and skills for the management of multicultural education environment? 7. What are the educational needs of prospective teachers for multicultural education?

Method
In this study, convergent parallel design which is one of the mixed research methods has been employed. In this design, the researcher collects quantitative and qualitative data together, analyzes the data separately at the analysis stage, and then combines the results in general interpretation (Creswell and Clark, 2015). Throughout the study, the quantitative and qualitative data have been collected together via using one scale and five open-ended questions and the both data have been analyzed separately and their results have been used together for interpretation.

Sample and Universe
The universe of the study consists of undergraduate students studying in various departments of Afyon Kocatepe University Faculty of Education in the spring term of 2016-2017 academic year. The sample of the study consists of 165 students selected by simple random method. Demographic information about the sample is given in Table 1.  (2015) and consist seventeen items and four subdimensons (Cronbach's Alpha: .88, in this study α=.70) and personel information form including information about the students' department, gender and whether they had an education on multicultural education were used for collecting the quantitative data in the research.
In the collection of qualitative data, firstly, the studies conducted in the field of multicultural education were examined and the teacher competencies, characteristics and problems experienced in the multicultural education practice and the good examples encountered in a multicultural education environment were determined and based on these, a total of 9 openended questions were created. These questions were presented to the expert opinion of 2 doctoral students who have been studying doctorate degree in curriculum and teaching field and in line with the suggestions / feedback received from them (it was stated that the two questions had the same feature and one question was not understood) the number of questions was reduced to 6. A pilot study was conducted with the students in Afyon Kocatepe University Preschool Teaching Program 2 nd grade students with the remaining questions. The data obtained from the pilot application and the open-ended questions were re-submitted to the expert's opinion and it was determined that a problem was not understood by the prospective teachers and did not provide the data suitable for the research problem and it was decided to use five open-ended questions: Firstly, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to determine whether the scale used was normally distributed or not. Data were not normally distributed (p <.05) and therefore non-parametric tests were employed. In the study, Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis H test were used to examine the prospective teachers' perceptions of multicultural education and democracy according to different variables and content analysis was used in the analysis of qualitative data.

Findings
In this part of the study, in line with the sub-problems of the research, first of all, the prospective teachers' perceptions of multicultural education and democracy were determined and their perceptions of multicultural education and democracy were compared according to some variables. Then, the prospective teachers' perceptions of the concept of multicultural and multicultural education, their ability to support multicultural education in the classroom, their knowledge and skills for the management of multicultural education environment, and finally their educational needs for multicultural education were included. The first sub-problem of the study 'What is the level of the prospective teachers' perceptions of multicultural education and democracy?' is given Table 2. As can be seen in Table 2, the mean value of the prospective teachers regarding the perceptions of multicultural education and democracy is at the level of 'strongly agree' (x̄ = 4.12).The mean values of the sub-scales are that democratic perception towards culture is at the level of strongly agree (x̄ =4.61), perception of multicultural education and democracy in education environment is at the level of 'strongly agree' (x̄ = 4.39), negative perceptions towards multicultural education is at the level of 'partially disagree' (x̄ = 2.85), perception of multicultural education opportunities is at the level of 'agree' (x̄ =4.12).
The second sub-problem of the study 'Does the level of multicultural education and democracy perception of prospective teachers differ significantly in terms of gender variable?' is given Table  3. When prospective teachers' perceptions of multicultural education and democracy are analyzed according to gender variable, it has been concluded that there is a significant difference between the groups in favour of female prospective teacher in the democratic perception towards culture sub-dimension (U = 1744,00, p = .000), in perception of multicultural education and democracy in education environment sub-dimension (U = 1590,00, p = .000) and in the total scale (U = 1868,00, p = .002). It has been found that there is a significant difference in favor of male prospective teachers in the sub-dimension of negative perceptions towards multicultural education (U = 2033.00, p = .014). It has been found that there is no statistically significant difference in the perception of multicultural education opportunities (U = 2214.50, p = .072), which is the fourth sub-dimension of the scale.
The third sub-problem of the study 'Does the level of multicultural education and democracy perception of prospective teachers differ significantly in terms of department variable?' is given Table 4. When Kruskal Wallis results have been examined to determine whether there is a meaningful difference between prospective teachers' perceptions of multicultural education and democracy according to their departments, it has been found that there is a significant difference between the groups in the first sub-dimension of the scale, democratic perception towards culture (p <.05). As a result of the post hoc test, it has been concluded that Turkish Teaching Prospective Teacher (Rank Mean = 115.65) had higher perception than Physical Education Prospective Teacher (Rank Mean= 71.92). According to analyze results which has been done to determine whether there is a significant differences between the groups in the second sub-dimensions of the scale, perception of multicultural education and democracy in education environment, it has been concluded that there is a statistically meaningful difference between the groups (p <.05). As a result of the post hoc test, it has been concluded that preschool teaching prospective teacher (Rank Mean= 100,24) and Turkish teaching prospective teacher (Rank Mean= 122,92) have higher perception than physical education teaching prospective teachers (Rank Mean= 61,6) and science teaching prospective teachers. (Rank Mean=61,94).
In the third sub-dimension of the scale, negative perceptions towards multicultural education, it has been found that there is a significant difference between the groups (p <.05). It has been concluded that classroom teaching prospective teachers (Mean Rank= 82,37), physical education teaching prospective teachers (Mean Rank= 95,90) and science teaching prospective teachers (Mean Rank= 97,04) have a higher perception than Turkish teaching prospective teachers (Mean Rank= 36,92). The findings of the fourth sub-problem of the study 'Does the level of multicultural education and democracy perception of prospective teachers differ significantly in terms of education for multicultural education variable?' It has been concluded that there is no statistically meaningful difference between the groups in the total total scale (U= 1625.50, p= .424) and in the sub-dimensions, respectively; democratic perception towards culture (U = 1614.5, p = .385), perception of multicultural education and democracy in education environment (U = 1524.5, p = .200), negative perceptions towards multicultural education (U = .1615.15, p (.388) and perception of multicultural education opportunities (U = .1518.50, p = .192). The fifth sub-problem of the study 'What is the perception of prospective teachers about the concept of multiculturalism?' is given in Table 5. The sixth sub-problem of the study 'What is the perception of prospective teachers regarding the concept of multicultural education?' is given in Table 6.

PT151: 'Having knowledge about the people from different cultures as well as their own culture. It is the development of the individual in an intended way. It is that an individual knows enough of the elements of each region regardless of the cultural difference.'
The seventh sub-problem of the study 'How do prospective teachers perceive their ability to support multicultural education in the classroom?' is given in Table 7.  Table 7, it has been concluded that prospective teachers mostly focused on 'Using different methods and materials' (f = 51) and 'Teaching different cultures' (f = 21). However, it has been concluded that most of the prospective teachers have stated that they do not know how to support multicultural education in their classrooms (f = 21) and that they do not support multicultural education (f = 21). It has been determined that the least used expressions by prospective teachers about supporting multicultural education are 'Extra interest in different cultures' (f = 2) and 'Trips abroad '(f = 1). The sample answers given by the prospective teachers are: PT3: 'There may be subjects from every culture. These subjects may be appropriate for students. The eighth sub-problem of the study 'What is the perception of prospective teachers about their knowedge and skills for the management of multicultural education environment?' is given in Table 8.  Table 9 is examined, it is concluded that the category in which the prospective teachers state the most ideas about the management of multicultural education environment is 'I do not have any knowledge and skills' (f = 139). The least used category by the prospective teachers is 'multicultural education is nonsense' (f = 2). The sample answers given by the prospective teachers are: The ninth sub-problem of the study 'What are the educational needs of prospective teachers for multicultural education?' is given in Table 9. There must be a training for teaching methods 5 We need an education for tolerance 4 We need respect, not education 4 For the success of students 4 I need language education 3 I need it socially 2 I need moral education 1 There must be an education against racism 1 There must be education for success 1 When the table 9 is examined, it has been concluded that the prospective teachers's answer to the question 'In what aspects do you need education for multicultural education?' are 'I have no idea' (f=46) and 'I need education to know the culture' (f=43). The least given answers by the prospective teachers are 'I need moral education' (f=1), 'There must be an education against racism' (f=1) and 'There must be education for success' (f=1). The sample answers given by the prospective teachers are: O99: 'I have no idea' O106: 'I think I will need to understand my students as I will be a teacher going all over the country in the future.' O145: 'I need appropriate methods and materials for people from different cultures.' O148: 'I don't need it because I'm against it.' O158: 'It is necessary to respect cultures and opinions.' O160: 'This education should be provided in order to prevent conflict between the students.'

Discussion, Conclusion and Suggestions
The findings of the study have revealed that prospective teachers' perceptions of multicultural education and democracy are high. , in his study on the opinions of undergraduate students on multicultural and multicultural education, revealed that prospective teachers have positive attitudes towards multicultural education. As a result of the study conducted by Celik (2014), undergraduate students' perceptions of multicultural education and democracy were similar to the results of this study. As a result of the study conducted by Demircioglu and Ozdemir (2014), the perceptions of pedagogical formation students on multiculturalism were found to be above the moderate level. The findings obtained from the study conducted by Danaci, Eran, Cetin, et al. (2016) with preschool prospective teachers indicate that preschool prospective teachers' attitudes towards multicultural education are high and the results of the study are in line with the findings of this research. These findings show that prospective teachers' perceptions of multicultural education are high and they respect for individual differences. It can be interpreted that these perceptions of prospective teachers will be reflected positively on multicultural education practices and this level of perception can be reflected on classroom practices with multicultural courses to be added to the curriculum. The findings obtained from the scale used in the study revealed that there were significant differences in the perception of multicultural education and democracy according to the gender variable. While there is a significant difference in favor of female teacher candidates in terms of democratic perception towards culture, multicultural education and democracy sub-dimensions in the educational environment and in the scale, there is a statistically significant difference in favor of male teacher candidates in negative perceptions towards multicultural education. There was no significant difference in the perception of opportunities for multicultural education in terms of gender variable. Alanay (2015) found similar findings in his study to determine the views of undergraduate students on multicultural education. As a result of the study, it was concluded that female participants had a higher perception. Similarly, Bahadir (2016) evaluated the multicultural perceptions of Social Studies teachers and found that female teachers had a higher perception of multicultural education. It can be thought that the role of the women in social life has an effect on that female prospective teachers have higher perception level than male prospective teachers in multicultural education. Therefore, it can be interpreted that female prospective teachers are more embracing towards individual differences. As a result of the analysis conducted to determine whether prospective teachers' perceptions of multicultural education and democracy differs according to the department they study, it was concluded that there was no statistically significant difference in the scale total. However, it has been reached that there were significant differences in favor of Turkish prospective teachers and preschool prospective teachers in the Kulture yonelik demokratik algi and Egitim ortamlarinda cokkulturlu egitim ve demokrasi algisi sub-dimensions; in favor of Classroom Prospective teachers, Physical education teacher candidates and sciences, Science teaching prospective teachers in the sub-dimensions of Cokkulturlu Egitime yonelik olumsuz algilar. In the study conducted by Alanay (2015) to determine the perceptions of prospective teachers about multicultural education, it was concluded that pre-school teacher candidates, social studies teacher candidates and foreign language teacher candidates had more positive perception than science teacher candidates. Danaci, Eran, Cetin et al. (2016) concluded that pre-school teacher candidates have high attitudes towards multicultural education. Polat (2009) concluded that teacher training, that is the department the prospective teachers study, was directly effective in acquiring multicultural personality. For this reason, prospective teachers should be educated in accordance with the the differences they will encounter in their professional lives and the courses aimed at multiculturalism should be included in teacher training curriculum. When the qualitative findings of the study were examined, it has been concluded that the prospective teachers stated that multiculturalism is living together of the people from different culture, origin and language, having knowledge about different cultures as well as stating that multiculturalism is a negative concept and it may create problems in the societies. When the definitions in the related field are examined, it is seen that multiculturalism is defined as groups that live in a certain geography and have different language, religion, race, history, geography and culture (Banks, 2013) and it is defined as tolerance of these differences in society (Reitz). (2009). Based on the definitions of prospective teachers, it was concluded that prospective teachers focused only on cultural differences in multiculturalism and ignored, or they do not know or aware of, other differences. It was also reached that prospective teachers stated that multicultural education is that people with different cultures have education together, including every culture in education and having knowledge about every culture and it was concluded that multicultural education is mostly perceived as the education of different culture by the prospective teachers. In the literature, the main purpose of multicultural education is to provide all students with cultural, ethnic, religious and linguistic options (Spring, 2010) and to ensure that all students benefit from equal opportunities in the educational process regardless of these differences (Banks, 2007). When the answers given by the prospective teachers and the definitions in the literature were compared, it was found that the prospective teachers focused on the cultural dimension of multicultural education and ignored other differences. This is interpreted as prospective teachers' lack of knowledge about multicultural education in all aspects. When the perceptions of pre-service teachers in the qualitative dimension of the research about how they support multicultural education in terms of material use, teaching method, technique and strategy selection and classroom management are examined, it is concluded that prospective teachers often highlight the cultural differences. It is stated in the related literature that teachers should make use of their cultural characteristics, experiences and perspectives to make ethnically different students active in the educational environment in order to support such an environment (Gay, 2002) and be able to empathize with those students (Perso, 2012). Culturally competent teachers organize their classroom activities in a way that establishes a relationship with students' social life and are aware of the necessity of adapting and applying the information by the student (Sleeter, Cristine and Carl, 1987). In this respect, it is thought that teachers' focus on cultural differences may lead to students ignoring other differences. In addition, the majority of prospective teachers stated that they did not know how to support the multicultural education environment (f = 42) and that they would not support the multicultural education environment (f = 21). Considering the schools and students with individual differences in different regions where prospective teachers will work after graduation, it can be interpreted that this view of prospective teachers will negatively reflect on the education environment, and it might lead to discrimination between students and lack of support to the students.
In the question about how prospective teachers find their knowledge and skills about the multicultural education environment, prospective teachers stated that they mostly did not have knowledge about the multicultural education (f = 139) and that they considered themselves insufficient (f = 13). It is stated in the literature that multicultural teachers are able to create a democratic learning environment by respecting the cultural differences of students in their classrooms and offer practices that provide equal opportunities for them, as well as recognizing and combating their own prejudices (Banks, 2005). In addition to these characteristics, teachers should enrich their learning environments and respect each student based on the differences in their classes (Basbay & Kagnici, 2011). In order to improve the knowledge of prospective teachers about multicultural education, to increase their competence in this subject and to reflect these in practice, prospective teachers should take the necessary courses during undergraduate education. As a result of the question directed to examine what kind of education prospective teachers need about multicultural education, it was concluded that prospective teachers did not have any idea (f = 46) and that they needed education just to recognize the different culture (f = 43). Some of the teacher candidates stated that they felt inadequate and needed to be supported by some courses (f = 28). This may be due to the fact that prospective teachers did not have any education for multiculturalism and multicultural education in their departments. When the other studies are examined, it is emphasized that there are few studies on this subject in Turkey and prospective teachers do not have any education about multiculturalism and multicultural education. Cirik (2008) states that teaching multicultural education courses in related departments of faculties of education to prospective teachers will help spread this understanding throughout the country. It is recommended that teacher candidates should also be made aware of multicultural education  and that courses aimed at multicultural education should be taught in faculties of education (Oksuz, et al., 2016). Gay (2002) draws attention to the necessity of teachers to learn and develop themselves in multicultural education and to reflect these in the curriculum development and teaching methods and techniques they use. In this way, the curriculum can be developed and implemented to meet the needs of all students. Furthermore, it is emphasized that the effects of multiculturalism and global education are very weak in the curriculum implemented in our country and that these two approaches should be given importance (Acikalin, 2010). It is stated that instead of organizing themes related to multiculturalism in curriculum, it will be more beneficial to spread this understanding throughout the curriculum (Cirik, 2008). The deficiencies and knowledge of the prospective teachers about multiculturalism and multicultural education shows that these two approaches need to be developed in the currently implemented curriculum. The fact that the prospective teachers in the sample did not have any education related to multicultural education and did not attend any courses or seminars on the subject can be considered as the reasons for these deficiencies. Based on the findings of the study, it can be advised to develop curriculum that focus on eliminating the deficiencies of the prospective students about multiculturalism and multicultural education and can help the prospective students develop their skills.