The need to do more: promoting multiple perspectives in preservice teacher education through children's literature

Many preservice teachers come into teacher preparation programs with culturally insular perspectives and do not experience the cognitive dissonance necessary to reexamine their cultural beliefs. This study describes how we created a context within which 115 undergraduate students participated in literature studies. drama, and reflective writing in order to view critical textual incidents and contexts from multiple perspectives, This study (a) describes in-role simulations used in a literature Study to encourage preservice teachers to reexamine cultural beliefs, and (b) analyzes the themes of the internal reflections preservice teachers have made as a result of this experience, (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.