The purpose of this study is to examine the mediating effect of multicultural awareness
in the effect of pre-service early childhood teachers’ multicultural experiences on their
multicultural attitudes and provide foundational data to help pre-service early childhood
teachers cultivate their multicultural attitudes. To attain the research goal, this author
conducted literature analysis, expert review, and a survey. Questionnaire sheets filled out by
303 pre-service early childhood teachers went through final analysis, and based on that, this
researcher has drawn following conclusions:
First, among the subareas of multicultural experiences perceived by pre-service early
childhood teacher (direct experiences, indirect experiences), subareas of multicultural
awareness (acceptance, respect, openness), and subareas of multicultural attitudes (general
attitudes, teacher role attitudes, teacher education attitudes, curriculum attitudes), mostly,
there exist statistically significant positive correlation. However, there is no significant
correlation between direct experience and respect, and direct experience and teacher role
attitudes. Second, in the effect of pre-service early childhood teachers’ multicultural
experiences on their multicultural attitudes, the subareas of multicultural awareness,
acceptance, respect, and openness, have partial mediating effect at the level of p<.001, so it
is statistically significant. Also, multicultural experience influences multicultural attitudes
directly significantly, but multicultural experience influences multicultural attitudes more with
the mediating effect of the subareas of multicultural awareness. Accordingly, the universities
cultivating early childhood teachers will have to open a variety of multicultural courses and
provide them with both direct and indirect experiences so that pre-service early childhood
teachers can accept and respect multiculture and enhance their openness to it.