Diversity Preparedness in Teacher Education

Kappa Delta Pi Record, Winter 2005 by Sobel, Donna M, Taylor, Sheryl V

Programs should examine what is being done to support and mentor clinical teachers (along with university and other PDS faculty) and to assist them in modeling the teacher education program's core values concerning learners' diverse classroom contexts. Preservice teachers' call for more-more exposure, more explicit modeling and demonstration, more cultural information, and more candid conversations-should be heeded, along with their familiar message, "The clinical teacher teaches me how to teach." Yet, admittedly, these conversations are difficult, uncomfortable, or simply foreign to many educators (Sobel, Taylor, and Anderson 2003a; 2003b).

Given the daunting range of multidimensional skills required to teach in today's diverse classrooms, teachers-both preservice and in-service-need training, support, and mentoring to effectively implement diversity responsive practices. While multicultural inclusive teacher education rooted in a PDS model provides preservice teachers with a living laboratory where they can begin to transform themselves, future and focused research efforts are still needed to explore how comprehensive school-university partnership efforts affect renewal and reform in schools that serve students from ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse backgrounds (Abdal-Haqq 1999).

Much remains to be learned about university-school partnership efforts toward renewal, including how it occurs and is fostered. More needs to be known about schools' educational practices and teachers' instruction of learners from diverse backgrounds and with diverse abilities. And finally, more needs to be known about how educators can influence the organizational structures and educational practices that contribute to the conditions of social justice and academic success for all students.

References

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