Student Acceptance of a Multicultural Education

Abstract

While the virtues of a multicultural education are debated in the general US populace, most social work educators and organizations have embraced such an approach. Subsequently, social work journals have offered numerous essays on multicultural teaching techniques. Yet, these same journals have rarely explored the multicultural attitudes of social work students. To fill this gap, this paper empirically explores the ways in which BSW students accept or reject some multicultural goals. To do so, close-ended surveys were distributed to 437 undergraduates. After describing their responses to the authors' multicultural index, the project explores the survey results via demographic, social-psychological, and educational variables. With the assistance of a multiple regression, this project suggests that student acceptance of multiculturalism is swayed by the matters of gender and their stances on White privilege and institutional racism. However, student perceptions do not seem static since stu-

Looking beyond primary barriers: Support workers’ perspectives on school dropout among students with a migration background

“…They attributed school dropout to individual conflicts between students based on ethnic history or religion, culturally-inspired gender roles, having a "culturally-colored perspective" about education and earning a degree, and parents' lower educational aspirations due to cultural differences. On the one hand, the latter is in line with studies showing that the educational aspirations of parents, social workers, teachers, peers, and other close relatives affect the students' attitudes toward education (Cheng & Starks, 2002;Swank et al, 2001). On the other hand, this finding is contrary to previous research, showing that parental involvement and the educational aspirations of the parents are more associated with their educational level (cf.…”

Measuring Privileged Identity in Educational Environments: Development and Validation of the Privileged Identity Exploration Scale

“…Other studies reported both positive and negative outcomes, where the latter was often fueled by a sense of White guilt (Boatright-Horowitz et al, 2012;Kernahan and Davis, 2007). Students' beliefs toward White guilt, White privilege, and in American meritocracy (Swank et al, 2001;Asada et al, 2003;Munroe and Pearson, 2006) have also been linked to their acceptance of multicultural learning environments. These constructs, however, do not measure students' degree and expressions of resistance when confronted with dissonance-provoking stimuli in multicultural spaces.…”

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“…They were also demonstrably more likely to email back White help seekers, and less likely to email back minorities. This difference in responsiveness by male and female providers toward help seekers of different races is unfortunate, but to some degree expected and is corroborated by the broader literature on gender differences in racial attitudes and biased behaviors (Alvarez & Domenech Rodríguez, 2020;APA, 2018;David, 2014;Johnson & Marini, 1998;Nosek et al, 2007;Qualls et al, 1992;Radke et al, 2016;Roberts et al, 2019;Sidanius & Pratto, 1999;Smith et al, 2013), as well as the more limited research on mental health care providers (Maxie et al, 2006;Swank et al, 2001). Despite the importance of these findings and the many strengths of this study (e.g., large sample size, randomization of providers, multiple racial groups examined, diagnostic and socioeconomic issues explored, and the first to study email responsiveness), a number of limitations deserve mentioning.…”