An investigation on primary school teachers' cultural capital competencies and their attitudes towards multicultural education: Siirt province sample

The aim of this study is to investigate primary school teachers' cultural capital competencies and their attitudes towards multicultural education. The study is designed as a descriptive and correlational survey with its simple ramdom sampling model including 380 primary school teachers working in Siirt province. The data were collected through a 'Personal Information Form' prepared by the researcher, 'Cultural Capital Competency Scale' developed by Avcı (2015), and 'Teacher Multicultural Education Attitude Scale' designed by Yıldrım (2016). In order to analyze the participants' cultural capital competencies and their attitudes towards multicultural education, descriptive statistics (percentage, frequency, mean, standard deviation) were calculated and the statistical differences and relationships between/among the variables were presented with the application of t-test, ANOVA and correlation tests. The analysis of the results indicated that 'cultural capital competency' level of participant teachers was 'high' and showed statistically significant differences according to 'age', 'mother education level' and 'work experience' but not for 'gender', 'father education level', 'monthly income level', 'pre-school education experience', 'number of siblings' and 'place of residence before the university' variables. The subjects' attitudes towards multicultural education displayed statistically significant differences in terms of 'gender', 'age', and 'number of siblings' but no statistically significant difference was found for the other variables. Furthermore, it was found that there is a significant moderate positive correlation between the teachers' cultural capital competency and their attitudes towards multicultural education. Keywords: Primary school teachers, Cultural capital, Multicultural education, Attitude