Religious Equity

Teacher educators are being challenged to prepare teacher candidates for work with diverse students. For teacher candidates to work effectively with students from diverse cultures in all grade levels, they need to become familiar with some of the major issues that students confront in today's society. The study of children's literature from multiple perspectives can be a vehicle for developing an understanding of complex concepts related to multicultural issues. This article suggests books for building teacher candidates' background knowledge so that they can reflect on their life experience related to multicultural issues. Four categories of multicultural literature are presented: racism, poverty, gender equity, and religious beliefs. For each category, selections of children's multicultural literature are summarized, followed by a series of questions. The questions are designed to inspire teacher candidates to reflect on their personal diversity beliefs.