Context and Content: The Impact of Diversity Indicators on Teaching and Teacher Education Across Australia

• In Event: Shaping Australian Teacher Education Research

Abstract

A criticism of teacher education by many American teacher educators (Cochran-Smith, 2004; González, Moll & Amanti, 2005) is that graduates are not well equipped to work in diverse settings, in particular to teach students from inner urban, low socio-economic and culturally and linguistically diverse communities. In the Australian context similar criticism has been made of ‘a one size fits all’ approach to teacher preparation that does not address the needs of teachers to work, for example, in rural and remote contexts (Reid et al., 2010; Kline, White & Lock, 2013). To explore the notion of teacher education, context and content further, the SETE team has investigated how well equipped are teacher education graduates to meet the requirements of the diverse settings in which they are employed and, of those graduates who do describe being well prepared to teach in diverse contexts, what were the characteristics of their teacher education programs that may have enabled their preparation?

Authors

• Simone Jane White, Monash University

• Bernadette Mary Walker-Gibbs, Deakin University

• Jodie Kline, Deakin University

• Leonie Rowan, Griffith University