Qualitative Assessment of Multicultural Competence Development of Pre-service Teacher Participants in Civil Rights Pilgrimage

Abstract

Because UW-Eau Claire does not have a highly diverse campus to increase students' intercultural competence, students at the University in 2008 established a ten-day immersion experience entitled the Civil Rights Pilgrimage. Participants of the pilgrimage travel by bus to visit major sites of the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s through 1970s. This pilot program merged service learning and experiential learning to increase multicultural competence of student participants. The goal of this experience is to increase the intercultural competence in pre-service teachers. It is also to show the importance of an intercultural immersion experience for pre-service teachers. We anticipated that this experience would cause student teachers to improve in these key areas because of involvement on the trip.