With classrooms becoming increasingly diverse due to children's various cultural backgrounds and varying abilities, early childhood teacher education programs face the challenge of how best to prepare the workforce. Various initiatives have been implemented in teacher preparation programs to prepare early childhood educators to become competent in…

Describes the national movement toward competency-based and field-centered teacher training programs. Contends that these programs should have great impact on education. (Author/JN)

Discusses the Reality Based Multicultural Model (RBMM) created for Minnesota's teacher education programs to ensure that the preservice teacher interacts with diverse student populations and demonstrates competence in each of six program components. The RBMM requires that preservice teachers complete a field experience in a culture other than…

The purpose of this study was to examine the personal conceptualizations of pre-service music education students by focusing on how they talked about learning to teach music in the context of cultural diversity, and to probe the relationships among these conceptualizations prior to, during, and after an immersion internship experience in a…

This module adapts the content of an on-campus early childhood education program to a competency-based set of self-paced learning activities for use in largely self-directed, supervised instruction of student child caretakers employed at such settings as a day care center or Head Start agency. Addressed in the individual sections of the module are…