93-10-13 Educator Wants U.S. Teachers to Learn From Diverse Classrooms Overseas

EDUCATOR WANTS U.S. TEACHERS TO LEARN
FROM DIVERSE CLASSROOMS OVERSEAS

      CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Oct. 13 -- There's a major problem with
discussions about multicultural education in the United States,
according to educator Robert F. McNergney: the talks are framed
purely in American terms.
      He wants students and teachers to think of multiculturalism in
the context of world diversity.
      As director of the Commonwealth Center for the Education of Teachers at
the University
of Virginia, McNergney is developing video case studies that will help
prospective teachers learn
from the widely diverse, multicultural classrooms in South Africa, India,
Singapore, Denmark and
England. 
      Through his work at the research center at U.Va., McNergney has been
promoting the use
of cases to educate prospective teachers about the complexities of modern-day
instruction.  Long
used successfully in educating physicians, lawyers and future business
leaders, cases traditionally
offer written descriptions of real-life scenarios.
      With funding from the Hitachi Foundation, McNergney plans to move
beyond written cases
to produce videos of practicing teachers confronting the challenges of
teaching in diverse situations.
      In visits to schools in India, McNergney will focus on how teachers
contend with instructing
students in a country with more than a dozen regional languages and local
dialects.  In South Africa
he will study schools struggling to restructure after apartheid legislation
was repealed in 1991.  
      McNergney is particularly interested in visiting schools in Singapore,
where the population
is 75 percent Chinese, 15 percent Malay, 8 percent Indian and 2 percent
Eurasian.
      He'll study schools in Great Britain where immigrants often account for
more than 50
percent of the population, and he'll examine schools in Denmark, known for
its liberal policies.  
      The underlying rationale of this approach to developing cases is based
on McNergney's
concept of what teachers should be.  "I see teachers as problem solvers--a
view that is particularly
relevant in situations where teachers and students contend with conflicting
social values and
economic hardship," he said.
      The education professor hopes the finished videocases will change the
way teachers think. 
"By viewing the wide range of ethnic and cultural complexities in play, our
work will encourage
people to discard the idea that there is one best way of teaching.  I think
it will be obvious that
teachers need to develop multiple ways of addressing young people's needs,"
McNergney said.
      He believes this multiple approach can be likened to the breadth that
"multiculturalism"
implies.  "Multicultural education should be seen as the long-overdue
response to new demographic
realities of a mobile, transnational society," said McNergney, author of
numerous articles on teacher
education. 
      "The term `multicultural education' has elicited a wide spectrum of
reaction ranging from
praise to attacks in the United States.  I hope the finished videocases will
help move `multicultural
education' beyond discussion into practice," McNergney said. 

                                     ###
                                                            October 12, 1993

      FOR MORE INFORMATION, contact McNergney at (804) 924-0749.            
 
Karen Castle, Office Services Specialist, University News Office
P.O. Box 9018, Booker House, Charlottesville, VA  22906
(804) 924-7116, kac@virginia.edu

[Submitted by: Karen A. Castle  (kac@uva.pcmail.virginia.edu)
               Wed, 13 Oct 93 09:39:36 EDT]