Reimagining the Curriculum in Study Abroad: Globalizing Multiculturalism to Prepare Future Teachers

This article discusses research that indicates that the lived experience of studying abroad provides preservice teachers the intellectual and critical starting point for multicultural awareness of the educational, social, and political relationships between their lives and other cultures. With course work and field experiences that are grounded in multicultural life-experience, the authors argue that preservice teachers begin to develop the awareness, sensitivity, and skills they urgently need to bridge the gap between White teachers and their historically underprivileged student populations and to understand the rapidly diversifying classrooms in which they will teach.