Section archive - Trends in Teacher Education

This article examines the history, activities and future interests of the UNITWIN/UNESCO Chair on Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability and the associated International Network (IN) of Teacher Education Institutions. In 1998, the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development work programme on education for sustainable development (ESD) requested UNESCO to develop guidelines for reorienting teacher training to address sustainability.

The article discussed a new approach to multicultural teacher education, after realizing the problems faced by white student teachers. The author illustrates a four step method, or levels of thinking, of her critical literacy approach, namely, description, analysis, vision, and strategy. She uses them to generate reflection in her students that: (1) cycles through the goals of deconstruction and reconstruction; and (2) promotes ongoing critical thinking as the main goal of her multicultural education class. She briefly explains how she uses these four steps to get her students actively to engage with two of multicultural education's key ideas, 'race' and 'whiteness', and, in this way, destabilize their perception of themselves as 'guilty' white people