Working in a culturally diverse preschool Focus on preschool teachers’ experiences and perceptions

Abstract: Purpose: The purpose of the current study is to give the opportunity for teachers’ voices, which have often remained silent, to be heard. Through teachers’ personal stories, the study intends to identify patterns of similarity in order to gain valuable insights of the lived experiences of the preschool teachers working in a multicultural environment. For this reason, two research questions were formulated, as follows: “How do the preschool teachers describe their experience of working in a cultural diverse preschool?” and “What are the difficulties that the preschool teachers mention?”. Theory: The theoretical framework used in the study is sociocultural theory (Rogoff, 2003). The study embraces Rogoff’s (2003) definition of culture and cultural group. Thus, the understanding of cultural diversity which is broadly discussed in the study is based on Rogoff’s sociocultural theory and it is defined as different groups of people who organize their daily lives in different ways, come in contact. Patterns of similarities and differences can be identified between the culturally diverse groups. The challenge for the culturally diverse people who come in contact, work or live together is to try to understand the patterns of difference between the groups without judgments of value. Method: The current study takes place in a culturally diverse preschool. It is a qualitative study using life-history research as main method. Five culturally and linguistically diverse preschool teachers from one school communicate and share their 3 personal life stories through unstructured interviews which lasted from 20 to 40 minutes. The preschool teachers discuss their experience of working with culturally diverse students and colleagues and talk about their challenges. Their life-stories are analyzed and discussed in relation to the existing social frameworks, such as the formal Swedish preschool curriculum. “Time-lines” used as a methodological tool to help the unstructured interviews. They were expected to be designed by the preschool teachers prior to the interview in order to help them organize their thoughts, reflect and prompt effectively. The data were carefully selected and systematically managed. The analysis follows an inductive approach based on preschool teachers’ interviews transcriptions and the information provided was organized into thematic categories. The thematic categories were based on the relevance of the research objectives. Results: The current study showed a number of findings concerning preschool teachers’ lived experiences of working in a multicultural environment. As for preschool teachers’ description of their experience of working in a culturally diverse preschool, all the participants unanimously described their working experience as interesting and enriching. In a smaller percentage, nearly half of the questioned preschool teachers describe working in a multicultural environment as a challenge for them which helped them to get developed and become better as professionals and as individuals. In addition, most of the teachers interviewed in the current study confessed a sense of belonging in the “international community” of the school and presented themselves as “international” people who feel really comfortable working in such an environment. As for the second focal area of the study, a number of difficulties that preschool teachers face in a multicultural setting discussed during the interviews. More than half of the teachers found difficult to work according to the new ideology that the formal Swedish curriculum brings in the preschools. This ideological shift introduces a more academic focused way of working with preschool students as well as designing more structured activities for them. Thus, the European model of learning in preschool which tend to replace the traditional Scandinavian model, seems to make the teachers who have been raised according to the Scandinavian school system, to feel afraid of this ideological change. Another difficulty that the preschool teachers discussed during the interviews was to work and to deal with culturally diverse colleagues. The teachers referred to communication problems caused due to their cultural differences with their colleagues were more than half. Working in a language different from their mother tongue noticed as difficulty by two out of five preschool teachers participated in the study. The last difficulty identified in the study which was marked only by a small minority (one out of five) interviewed preschool teachers was the lack of appropriate professional development and support.