ABSTRACT
Institutions), X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 1 (Subject Matter Expertise), 3 (Diverse Learners), 4 (Instructional Strate-
gies), 7 (Instructional Planning), 9 (Refl ection and Professional Development) Topics: families, diversity, bias-reduction, prejudice, identity, students’ lives and experiences,
marginalization, perspective consciousness, ethical-political valuation, creating teaching materials, fi lm
Teachers are oft en prepared to focus on important traditional diversity issues such as race, gender, culture, and language issues. Missing from this perspective is a consideration of family diversity; however, expanding the defi nition and scope of multicultural education curriculum holds the potential to prepare new teachers to practice diverse family inclusion in several ways: (1) by broadening preservice teacher awareness of diversity to include family structure diversity, since the composition of the American family has changed drastically and continues to evolve; (2) by assisting preservice teachers in discovering and examining their own prejudices concerning children from diverse family backgrounds and providing them with ways to address those biases; and (3) by exposing preservice teachers to ways to refl ect upon their own thoughts and practices as well as ways to work collaboratively with others to raise awareness and solve problems.
