Teacher Education

In Australia, increasing numbers of migrants from different cultural and ethnic groups along with the implementation of inclusive education policies and practices have resulted in a broader diversity of students in school classrooms. While student populations have broadened in terms of ethnicity, culture, languages spoken and disability, the diversity of the teaching workforce has remained more static. Catering for the diverse needs of students has added to the complexities of teaching in the twenty-first century. Kumar and Hamer (2013) suggest that teachers lack adequate preparation in their teacher education to respond to the needs of diverse learners.  We argue that teacher educators need to draw on the prior intercultural learning, backgrounds and experiences of preservice teachers to better prepare them for teaching diverse learners. In this paper, we present the findings of a qualitative study that explored the impact that prior intercultural experiences have in shaping preservice teachers as teachers of diversity. An online qualitative questionnaire was used to collect data from preservice teachers (n=40) enrolled in a graduate entry teacher education program in eastern Australia. Hammer’s (2009) Intercultural Development Continuum (IDC) was used as a framework to analyse the data. The IDC is a model of intercultural competence used to explain how people interpret cultural difference (Hammer, Bennett & Wiseman, 2003).  The results indicate that sustained intercultural engagement over time provides opportunity for the development of greater intercultural sensitivity. In presenting the results, we draw on several cases that encompass the breadth of prior intercultural experiences of the preservice teachers.  While it is advocated that teacher education is well-positioned to play a key role in developing the intercultural competences of future teachers, the paper highlights the challenges in providing learning opportunities that allow preservice teachers to practice new ideas, challenge old ideas and reflect on the process of becoming inclusive educators.

It is known that schools are getting more culturally diverse every day and with the recent refugee influxes to the country, linguistic and cultural diversity in the schools is a hot debate in Austria. While the change in the demographics of classrooms is not a problem itself, the problem lies in how teachers respond to that change especially when there is a mismatch between teachers’ and students’ backgrounds (Brown, 2007). To diminish the effect of cultural gap between teachers and students, multicultural teacher competences are needed. However, the inclusion of heterogeneity of cultures, languages or religions in Austrian teacher training curriculum does not date back. The classes offered in teacher training colleges are limited to teaching German as a second or foreign language.
To generate a basis for the curriculum development for the cultural diversity module in teacher training college, pre-service teachers were recruited as data sources. The study adopted two questions: (i) How do teachers perceive their readiness with regard to teaching in culturally diverse classrooms? (ii) What are the teachers’ suggestions to teacher education programs with regard to preparing teachers for culturally diverse classrooms?
The self-report survey instrument in this study was a questionnaire developed by the researcher and validated via expert examination and a pilot study. The accessible population was 168 teachers working in these six schools. The qualitative data collected through open-ended questions of surveys were analyzed through content analysis where test-retest method consistency (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2006).
Pre-service teachers showed their deep trust in their characteristics and positive attitude to other cultures as their strengths and reported that they need more practice in culturally diverse classrooms and more cross-cultural knowledge before starting the profession. They mainly predicted chaotic classroom environment and language problems in their future teaching. Pre-service teachers expect teacher education programs to provide more information about other cultures via more seminars and more practice teaching in culturally diverse classrooms. Suggestions to teacher education programs included suggestions related to teacher educators too. Viennese pre-service teachers asked for teacher educators who have more experienced in culturally diverse classrooms and/or who have migration background.