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.