Cultural diversity in preschool : Development of teachers’ educational tools in multicultural classes

Abstract:   Cultural diversity in early education has been taking an important role in schools for decades, but teaching in multicultural classrooms remains a challenge.  This systematic review proposed to highlight how preschool teachers make use of cultural diversity to develop educational tools and explore which tools are operationalized to address multicultural education in preschool. A search for articles has been carried out in online databases, resulting in ten articles included as a base for analysis. Educational tools and cultural diversity described in these articles covered important aspects to address multicultural education for children. A systematic review of the studies showed that firstly, preschool teachers have faced difficulties in applying cultural diversity in their practice. Secondly, although the teachers consider the curriculum to be an important tool it was revealed to be contradictory when referring to cultural diversity. The analyses concluded that curriculum, documentation and listen children’s needs and their prior experiences have an evident influence in teachers’ everyday work in addressing cultural diversity in preschool. Implications for future research were discussed in relation to the management of preschool teacher to develop a pedagogical plan in culturally diverse context and to consider the view of children and also the parent in the context of cultural diversity in preschool.