Teaching in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms: Turkish EFL instructors’ experience

Rana Yıldırım

Abstract


This study investigates Turkish EFL instructors’ perceptions regarding their readiness for and potential challenges that they face in classrooms with students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods of inquiry, data were collected by utilizing the Multicultural Teaching Competency Scale (MTCS) (Spanierman, Oh, Heppner, Neville, Mobley, Wright, Dillon, & Navarro, 2011) and semi-structured interviews. The findings acquired from the scale revealed that the majority of the participating instructors perceived themselves as competent, yet further inquiry through the interviews indicated that they feel challenged while meeting the academic and linguistic needs of diverse group of students as they lack relevant formal training. The study calls for an urgent need to make provision for training programs designed to increase instructors’ awareness, knowledge and skills to work effectively in culturally and linguistically diverse education contexts.

Keywords


Multicultural education; teacher competency; multicultural teaching competency; language teaching; EFL

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