The purposes of this inquiry were to seek the multicultural awareness of students at homogeneously and heterogeneously populated schools in the Municipality of Sungai Penuh, Jambi, Indonesia. Data were collected through administrating the adapted version of Multicultural Awareness Scale to 334 students from one homogeneously populated senior high school and one heterogeneously populated madrasah aliyah (Islamic senior high school). Data were analyzed by using Rasch Analysis and tests of inferential statistics. The results of data analyses indicated that 1) the students had a relatively high multicultural awarness, 2)the examination on the map of item endorsabilty indicated that the students had high cultural awareness but low self-awareness, 3) the students at the heterogeneously populated madrasah aliyah had a higher multicultural awareness than their counterparts at the homogeneously populated senior high school, and 4) no statistically significant differences were found in the comparisons of the students’ awareness across the demographic variables across and within the same school. Policy implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed.

The purpose of this quantitative research was to examine whether there were statistically significant differences in Islamic elementary public school teachers’ curriculum orientation and teaching conception across demographic variables of gender, age, and teaching experience. Data were collected through questionnaires from 65 Islamic elementary public school teachers. Data were analysed through Rasch analysis and tests of inferential statistics. The results of the data analysis show that, over all: 1) the teachers’ curriculum orientation tended to be “technological” and “academic” rather than “social reconstructionistic”; and 2) the teachers tended to conceptualize teaching as “apprenticeshipdevelopmental” and “knowledge transmission” rather than “nurturing” or “social reform”. Tests of inferential statistics revealed a significant difference between male and female teachers’ conception of teaching. A significant difference was also found in the teachers’ curriculum orientation across the demographic variable of teaching experience. No significant difference was found across the variable of age. Correlations were identified between the teachers’ curriculum orientation and teaching conception. The findings of this study provide evidence for policy makers, school leaders, researchers, parents, and teacher educators that the curriculum orientation and teaching conception of the majority of the teachers seems to be incompatible with the nature of character education that necessitates teachers to be “nurturing” and “social reconstructionistic”. In addition, evaluation and reorientation of paradigms and approaches in teacher education and educational objectives and further research are suggested.