European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Abstract

Moral Education and History Education are both part of a student's social and political socialisation in Malaysia. These two curriculum programmes aim to help each student behave in accordance with the social norms expected in Malaysia, including respecting and obeying the values of democracy and rule of law. However, teachers may have their own value judgments, so how to prepare teachers to deal with students' different value systems in a diverse classroom is a challenge for teacher programmes. Teachers with high multicultural competency feel confidence and comfortable when confronted with diverse student needs. This study aims to identify the status of multicultural competency among the Moral Education and History Education pre-service teacher in an educational institution in Malaysia. Multicultural competency among these teachers is identified based on a tripartite model comprised of three aspects: ‘Awareness’, ‘Knowledge’ and ‘Acting’. The data collection methods used in this study are from the quantitative approach. 90 respondents were asked to answer a questionnaire adapted from the ‘Munroe Multicultural Attitude Scale Questionnaire’ (MASQUE) and ‘Teacher Multicultural Attitude Survey’ (TMAS). The results of this study present that the Moral Education and History Education pre-service teacher shows a higher level of multicultural awareness and knowledge; however, the results also note that these pre-service teachers acting on injustice or inequalities to be relatively low. This study suggests that the development of multicultural competency in teacher education programmes should more strongly emphasise the components of skill or demonstrating multicultural competence in future.