ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the development and evaluation of a special education teacher education program at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, which has attempted to meet the needs of a culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) population. Based on the demographics of the United States (US), and California in particular, it is evident that there is a great shortage of teachers who can work effectively with CLD pupils. In the US, the majority of university-based special education courses have been preparing White monolingual English-speaking teachers to work with White pupils who also speak English. However, due to demographic changes, teacher education is being asked to prepare these teachers to function in a multicultural and multilingual society. Infusion of bilingual/multicultural competencies into existing coursework was difficult since it took at least one year to identify the necessary competencies and have them evaluated by the Blue Ribbon Committee.
