Educating for diversity, social responsibility and action: preservice teachers engage in immersion experiences.

This paper examines how a short cultural immersion experience strongly impacted and had long lasting personal and educational effects on preservice teachers who were enrolled in a cultural diversity class. Reports from their reflections and oral responses indicated that this experience helped them to be more culturally aware and to seriously reflect on their prejudices, misconceptions and stereotypes about minority groups. Through personal convictions they realized that positive changes toward cultural diversity had to be made if they were going to be culturally responsive in their daily lives, and as teachers in the classrooms.