In this section we would like to highlight some of the results obtained from questionnaires completed by 431 teachers between 1996 and 1997. The questionnaire contained 38 items, and was entitled "The Opinions of State Primary School Teachers Regarding Teaching in a Multicultural and Multiethnic Society". The schools were located all over Spain (including two tiny Spanish cities located in northern Morocco, called Ceuta and Melilla) and Britain (England, Wales and Scotland) -although we will here only refer to Spain. We received addresses and permission to submit 10 questionnaires to each school.

The questionnaires were divided into five main sections entitled: (1) main information about the respondent; (2) the role of the school; (3) multi/intercultural education and academic achievement; (4) teacher preparation; and (5) additional information.

There were six statements towards which teachers had to give their position, asking them to choose between five possible answers, which varied between "strongly agree", "agree", "indifferent/undecided/neutral", "agree", and "strongly disagree." The last question was open-ended and optional, so they could express their opinions freely.

This is part of a research study on the opinions of public elementary school teachers working in schools with a minimum of 25% of the students from ethnic/racial or cultural minority groups. This research illuminates teachers' perspectives regarding the challenges, needs and/or satisfaction they encounter in their teaching work with minority students.

In brief, four of the most relevant results were:

1. Teachers believe that the presence of ethnic/cultural minorities requires specialised training in multi/intercultural education (65.4%), and also a bit more than half of them (53.4%) consider it necessary even if they have no ethnic/cultural minorities as yet;
2. They consider that schools should be more concerned with making minority students feel integrated within the school (85.6%), and compensate possible shortfalls they may have when beginning school (89.3%);
3. They reject any kind of segregation of minority children, be it separate schools for each ethnic/cultural minority (66.1%) or receiving special separate classes within the same school (60.3%);
4. When asked whether they would like to continue teaching in multicultural schools or not (if they had the chance to choose), 69.4% of teachers said yes, and 54.1% saw teaching as a professional challenge. (Pérez-Domínguez, 1999).

As for the section entitled "information about the respondent", 65.3% of them were women, and 34.7% men, and all were white Spaniards. Most of the respondents (32.4%) were between 40 and 47 years old, the lowest percentage of them (5.6%) were over 56. Regarding teaching experience, 39.4% have had less than 6 years experience. 68.1% were teachers while the remaining were principals (11.5%), support teachers (12.2%), and vice-principals (8.2%).

Results obtained from the research have shown that teachers feel the need to better understand the increasing diversity in Spain. Although 431 questionnaires clearly do not represent all public elementary school teachers teaching in multicultural settings in Spain with a minimum of 25% of pupils from ethnic/racial or cultural minority groups, current literature and research (see, among others, Bartolomé-Pina, 1995, 1997; Carbonell & Parra, 1991a, 1991b; Cowan & Pérez-Domínguez, 1996; García-Castaño & Pulido-Moyano, 1993; García-López & Sales-Ciges, 1997; Gonzalo & Villanueva, 1996; Jordán-Sierra, 1994, 1997; Jové i Monclús, 1996; Merino, Muñoz & Sánchez, 1994; Santos-Rego & Pérez-Domínguez, 1997; Sepa-Bonaba, 1993; Vázquez-Gómez, 1994; Buxarrais-Estrada et al., 1991), as well as our formal and informal talks with teachers and visits to schools, coincide with the outcomes of our research.

We believe that more research should be conducted exploring what teachers have to say about their own experience teaching in multicultural contexts.

MAIN SOURCE

Santos Rego, M.A. & Pérez-Domínguez, S. (2001). Intercultural education in the European Union: The Spanish case. In C.A. Grant & J.L. Lei (Eds.), Global Constructions of Multicultural Education: Theories and Realities. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.