The evaluation of social science teachers' multiculturalism and their multicultural education perception (Erzurum city sample)

The concept of multiculturalism has become a topic of discussion in recent years. Multiculturalism come into prominence as different cultures and identities coexist in almost all countries of the world. The aim of multiculturalism is to ensure that different identities, races, religions and cultures live together and prevent discrimination. Multicultural education, which is part of the concept of multicultural education; is an educational approach that aims to create equal educational opportunities for all students belonging to different cultural structures, races, ethnicities and social groups, to change and restructure the educational environment. The aim of multicultural education is to provide students with values such as respect for differences, tolerance, understanding and empathy. In addition, multicultural education helps different cultural groups to preserve their cultural values by providing equal educational opportunities without discrimination. Among the teachers, Social Science teachers can use and practice the best multicultural education. In this respect, it is important to know how is the perceptions and attitudes of Social Science teacher about multiculturalism and multicultural education and how change these attitudes depending on gender, age, edicational status, seniority etc. With the increase in multicultural education practices in multinational and multicultural societies, the multiculturalism concept has became importance in scientific studies. Depending on this importance; in the qualitative part of the study, it has been aimed to determine the perceptions of social science teachers on multiculturalism and multicultural education by applying semi-structured questionnaires to 50 social science teachers in the central districts of Erzurum in 2018/2019 academic year. In the study in which the answers were analyzed qualitatively, the knowledge of these concepts were reviewed and the contents were evaluated about the identified categories (multiculturalism, multicultural education perception, mother tongue education, multicultural education practices, responsibilities of teachers related to multicultural education). In the study, 90 %of teachers have positively perceptions about multiculturalism, 86 %of teachers have positively perceptions about multicultural education conceptsand and 58%of teachers have an idea that multicultural education should be applied in the school education. When the perceptions of mother tongue education are discussed, about 66%of the teachers are in favor of having a common state language, otherwise they think that there will be discrimination. Within the scope of the study, it was concluded that teachers were not aware of the practices related to multicultural education. Perceptions of responsibility towards multicultural education are positive with 86%. In the quantitative part of the study, multicultural attitudes of teachers were determined with "Multicultural Attitude Scale of Teachers". This scale was applied to 90 teachers (54 females and 36 males) in the Social Science branch. The teachers were selected by random sampling in the central districts of Erzurum. The obtained data were coded and analyzed with the SPSS 24.00 package program.