Summary Of Acting On Beliefs In Teacher Education For Cultural Diversity

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Academic Summary of “Acting on Beliefs in Teacher Education for Cultural Diversity” By Gay (2010) The article “Acting on Beliefs in Teacher Education for Cultural Diversity” by Gay (2010), who is a Professor at University of Washington in Faculty of Education, focuses on educating teachers for cultural diversity in classroom environments, which is frequently discussed but not a well-developed topic. According to Gay (2010), the society we live in has a huge impact on our lives, although we try to ignore or minimize its effect on educational area. There is a huge Eurocentric emphasis in the educational setting that affect students from culturally, ethnically and racially diverse backgrounds, and because of this she thinks that some major changes …show more content…

Although the author of the text is familiar with the American context, I believe all these arguments and strategies can be applied to different countries including Turkey. There are also different minority groups in Turkey like Kurds, Alevis etc. and they face serious problems in the education area similar to those in USA. Alongside the fact that Kurdish kids cannot get education on their own native language, they and the other minority groups become obligated to get education where there is a huge “Turkish identity” orientation like the Eurocentric orientation that is prevalent in USA. For example, Alevi children in Turkey have to attend the religion lessons that are mostly suitable with the beliefs of the majority and incompatible with their beliefs. As Gay (2010) states, although cultural diversity is seen as a positive and valuable in theory, it is often seen as a threat and tried to be eliminated in real life; and because of this reason teachers mostly deal with aspects of cultural diversity that won’t cause trouble for them. However, I believe that if a person chooses to be a teacher he/she has to have some responsibility to the society to be genuinely sensitive about these issues and has to act to promote acceptance of cultural diversity both in the society and in the education area. As Smylie (1995, as cited in Gay, 2010) states, the duty of the teachers is not only learning new subjects and instructional strategies, but also changing their beliefs of practice and “theories of