Section archive - Multiculturalism & Diversity

This study explores the professional learning of ten pre-service teachers from Hong Kong and ten host teachers in a school in China who participated in a teaching abroad project. The participants’ professional learning during the project is conceptualised within five knowledge domains of quality teaching for the twenty-first century: personal, contextual, pedagogical, sociological and social. The findings suggest that by immersing pre-service teachers in an unfamiliar teaching environment, they can learn professional knowledge for teaching in an increasingly complex world. This complements the knowledge they are acquiring in their domestic courses and practicums. Furthermore, through the pedagogical exchange of ideas, the host teachers are also found to benefit. The authors recommend that teaching abroad opportunities be included in initial teacher education (ITE) programmes and that host teachers’ professional learning are considered in their development.

This article reports on a mixed-methods study investigating teacher educators’ views on their role in preparing future teachers to work effectively with multilingual children. A survey was conducted with 62 teacher educators who have responsibility for inclusion or English as an Additional Language (EAL) teacher training, which was followed up with a series of semi-structured interviews. Key findings suggest that there may be a mismatch between the perceptions of teacher educators and newly qualified teachers, as the vast majority of the participants reported that they were either confident or very confident about teaching student teachers how to teach EAL children. Additional themes explored were related to concerns over a performativity culture in education, and to balancing linguistic diversity training alongside other pressing priorities in initial teacher education.

This study, based on a corpus of interviews with student primary school teachers engaged in a two-year programme of initial teacher education in France, investigates their readiness to meet the challenges of the multicultural classroom. Their attitudes towards the cultural and linguistic diversity of their classrooms, and their capacity to go beyond simply ‘managing’ the situation are analysed. The results suggest that without major changes in approach at the levels of teacher education, schools administration and within schools themselves; the rich possibilities to develop positive attitudes to inclusion and interculturality offered by the presence of plurilingual and pluricultural children in primary school classrooms will continue to be overlooked.

This study explored gender differences in stressors experienced by teacher education students at the University of Ghana, and adaptation stratagems they might utilise to manage stress. In 2018–2019 academic year, a total of two hundred and seventy (270) second- and third-year students were selected using random sampling procedure to respond to closed-ended and open-ended questions in a survey questionnaire. The questionnaire was to measure stressors students encounter and to measure students’ coping stratagems they might use to minimise their stress levels (Folkman & Lazarus, 1984). The findings show that the students use multiple strategies, such as praying/meditating and self-distracting activities to cope with stress. Although, females had higher overall perceived stress levels regarding encountered academic stressors and health stressors, the difference between genders was insignificant. Similarly, females had a higher perception of stress from psychosocial stressors when likened to males, however, the difference between genders was also insignificant. Regarding perceived coping stratagems, females utilised adaptive coping stratagems whilst males utilised maladaptive and avoidance coping stratagems although the difference between genders was also not significant. The study recommended among others that males be urged to likewise utilise increasingly adaptive strategies to control strain.