An examination of Turkish public schools and private international schools with regards to multicultural education principals

Aim of this study is to evaluate public schools and private international schools in Turkey with regards to multicultural education principals. Comparative case study will be used as method in this study under the guidelines of the qualitative research methods. Two cases had been chosen for this study according to data collected in the fall semester in 2010-2011. One case is a public school in which 25% of student population is foreign (international) students who have international roots, and other case is a private international school in which all students are international students. Objectives related with multicultural education in primary school curriculas and teachers as the operator of these curriculas have been chosen as unit of analysis of this study. Diverse data collection methods are used in this study. Objectives in public school's and private international school's programs were examined thoroughly and semi-structured interviews were conducted with total of 9 teachers who work in these two schools. Additionally, every teacher's class was observed shortly and some aim-related documents were examined in order to support the data conducted from interviews and programs. These collected data were analyzed with the usage of Castagno's (2009) 6- approached framework for multicultural education. A secondary desctiptive analysis has been done between the categories while evaluating the interview data. According to data of this study, there are no any objectives related with education for assimilation and education for social action approaches neither in public school's curriculum, nor in private international school's. It has been found that generally these programs answer education for amalgamation, pluralism, cross-cultural competence, and critical awareness approaches. When these programs analyzed, it has been found out that both schools have no roots of multicultural education in their curriculas' basis. According to semi-structured interview data analyses, teacher thoughts and opinions vary on the spectrum from education for assimilation to critical awareness approach. There is one teacher who shared her thoughts about education for social action approach. It is resulted that teachers' thoughts tend to be positive about multicultural education of teachers. Besides, it has been seen in the results that elementary classroom teachers in public school have incomprehensibility or misconception about multicultural education. Also, it can be seen in the results that when multicultural education principals are considered about their actions and attitudes towards international students, they have a lower knowledge level or competence about it. It has been seen in the results that teachers who work in private international school aimed to increase the interaction of between Turkish and other cultures and international students using real experiences and celebrating cultural differences. This situation has been related with psychical conditions of school (being entitled as "private", continuing to education in a non-domestic country, etc.) and giving educational services in another country and culture. Keywords: Multicultural Education, Cultural Differences, Elementary Curricula, International Students