TEACHERS’ PERCEIVED MULTICULTURAL COMPETENCE WHEN WORKING WITH STUDENTS OF THE HISPANIC POPULATION

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore teachers’ perceptions of their multicultural competence and how their views translate into their interactions with Hispanic students within the classroom. A phenomenological approach was utilized for this study in order to capture the self-perceptions and behaviors of teachers who work with Hispanic students. Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory provides a framework for how teachers learn and model their behaviors after one another. Through social cognitive theory, the researcher has demonstrated that teachers can utilize the multicultural training they have received either at the university level or through professional development to advance their competence to develop positive relationships with the Hispanic student population. The researcher conducted interviews of 10 teachers within one southeast Texas high school to gain individual perspectives of their experiences of working with Hispanic students. Teachers were chosen from a specific campus based upon the knowledge they could potentially lend to the study (Maxwell, 2013). For instance, the campus which was selected for this study has a significant Hispanic population, and the teachers who work on this campus have had Hispanic students in their classrooms. This campus was in a suburban area of southeast Texas. The school was classified as a high school and was serving approximately 2500 students. The five major themes from the data analysis were altruism, connection, barriers, universality, and culture. The researcher concluded that multicultural teaching should be ongoing to foster positive student-teacher relationships with Hispanic students. Implications include a greater leadership role for school counselors to provide training and mentoring for the school faculty. Further research was also suggested in the areas of teacher perceptions, role of the school counselor, and multicultural education.