Multicultural Vignettes for Teacher Preparation

Abstract Future teachers need to attain skills, knowledge, and positive dispositions in multicultural education to provide a culturally sensitive learning environment. It is the responsibility of teacher educators to use tools of assessment to train and gauge student progress toward this end. The purpose of this article is to describe the process of creating and using vignettes as a classroom assessment tool to better prepare teacher candidates for diverse classrooms. Results from our experiences using vignettes indicate that most students are only beginning to develop proficient performance standards, and need additional learning experiences. Implications for using vignettes to partially address National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education standards and prepare students for the Principles of Learning and Teaching (PLT) test are also presented and discussed.