Honoring Diversity in Teacher Education: Infusing Learning Styles; Cooperative Learning and Multicultural Nonsexist Education into the Student Teaching Semester

This paper demonstrates how teacher educators can empower preservice teachers to develop a rationale for honoring diversity in their classrooms by building upon an awareness of learning style preference; cooperative learning; and multicultural nonsexist education. A human relations course at the University of Northern Iowa that is taught concurrently with the student teaching experience demonstrates how student teachers become involved in collaborative relationships with their peers by sharing weekly seminars; planning presentations; doing action research; and engaging in classroom instruction. The model involves personalization of concepts through experiential learning in which group building and team teaching are key strategies. Learning from experience is the theme as future teachers are first allowed to experience learning as a learner and then apply this learning to their new role of teacher. Appendices provide a sample activity; "What's in a Name;" a way for student teachers to learn the names of persons in the group; and information on learning style preference. Contains 21 references. (LL)