Akın Gürbüz, Rana Yildirim
Exploring the Turkish EFL Instructors’ Perceptions of their Multicultural Teaching Competence
Exploring the Turkish EFL Instructors’ Perceptions of their Multicultural Teaching Competence
Öğr. Gör. Dr. Akın GÜRBÜZ
Prof. Dr. Rana YILDIRIM
Vilnius University, Philology Faculty, Lithuania
Çukurova University, Education Faculty, Türkiye
Abstract
This study aims to investigate how Turkish EFL instructors face the challenge posed by linguistically and culturally diverse students in their classrooms. More specifically, the study aimed to explore the instructor’s perceptions concerning their multicultural teaching competence in terms of four dimensions, namely awareness, knowledge, attitude, and skill. A mixed-method research design was utilized to conduct the study. Through a triangulated approach, data were collected through Critical Multicultural Teaching Competency Scale (Acar-Çiftçi, 2016), video-stimulated interviews, and semi-structured interviews. A purposeful sampling method was pursued in the selection of participants and 114 EFL instructors working at the School of Foreign Languages in various universities to collect quantitative data. The qualitative data of the study were collected through video-stimulated interviews with four instructors and semi-structured interviews with 20 instructors who also responded to the scale.
The findings acquired from the scale revealed that the participating instructors perceived themselves as highly competent regarding multicultural attitudes and moderately competent in awareness, knowledge, and skill dimensions. The qualitative findings also showed that the participating instructors were amply competent in terms of multicultural teaching. In the interviews, for instance, the participating instructors particularly emphasized the cultural diversity of students and the significance of showing empathy and avoiding prejudices in regards to multicultural awareness; placed considerable emphasis on the essential role of experience for multicultural knowledge; valued diversity as richness, an opportunity for communication and learning about differences in regards to multicultural attitude; and emphasized the ability to bring students from diverse groups together for multicultural skills.
Keywords: Cultural and linguistic diversity, multicultural education, multicultural teaching competence, EFL.
References
Acar-Çiftçi, Y. (2016a). Critical Multicultural Education Competencies Scale: A Scale Development Study. Journal of Education and Learning, 5(3). 51-63.
Biodata
Akın GÜRBÜZ is currently working at the School of Foreign Languages, Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, in Turkey. He holds a Ph.D. degree in ELT and has teaching experience of more than 10 years in language teaching. His research specialty and interests include multicultural education, intercultural communication, teaching language skills, blended and flipped learning, self-directed learning, discourse analysis, and professional development.
Rana Yildirim is a professor at the ELT Department of Çukurova University. She has an MSc and a PhD TESOL from Aston University, UK. She teaches on the undergraduate and graduate programme and supervises MA and PhD students. Her research interests include teaching English to young learners, gifted language learners and language teacher development at pre- and in-service levels. E-mail: ,
