International Perspectives on Teachers as Agents of Change: Addressing the Challenges of Diversity in Teacher Professional Development in Transnational Contexts

• In Event: Overcoming Inequalities of Systematically Underserved Communities From a Global Research Network: Teachers and Minority Women as Agents of Change

Abstract

One of the greatest challenges facing our global society is the preparation of teachers to effectively teach in culturally and linguistically complex classrooms worldwide. In this talk I discuss my current research that focuses on the preparation of teachers to teach diverse students and identify four countries that face similar challenges of teaching marginalized students from historically disenfranchised groups. Building on sociocultural theory and over a decade of data collected across national boundaries, I present my rationale for focusing attention on these four countries and the similar challenges they face. Building on this research and my Model of Generative Change (2009), I then share the lessons learned about what teachers must learn through participation in their professional development programs and the importance of developing teachers who are agents rather than objects of change, who are generative thinkers, and who have the ability to do pedagogical problem solving in diverse classrooms. I conclude by discussing the implications of these lessons learned for teachers—transnationally—who work with diverse student populations — and I propose new directions for preparing education professionals who possess the skills, dispositions and knowledge needed to work successfully with historically disenfranchised students across national boundaries.

Author

• Arnetha F. Ball, Stanford University