Teachers For Diversity Paper

737 Words3 Pages

In a comprehensive review of the literature, Zeichner (1993) identifies 16 key elements of effective teacher education for diversity. Twelve of these elements provide the organizational framework for "Educating Teachers for Diversity." Each element is a piece of the jigsaw puzzle of multicultural teacher education. Just as a puzzle must be completed in order to see the big picture, the education of teachers for diversity must be addressed in a holistic manner. The 12 elements are as follows:
• Element 1: Preservice education students are helped to develop a clearer sense of their own ethnic and cultural identities.
• Elements 2 and 3: Preservice education students are helped to examine their attitudes toward other ethnocultural groups. They …show more content…

They are taught about the limitations of this information.
• Element 7: The teacher education curriculum gives much attention to sociocultural research knowledge about the relationships among language, culture, and learning.
• Element 8: Preservice education students are taught various procedures by which they can gain information about the communities represented in their classrooms.
• Elements 9 and 10: Preservice education students are taught how to assess the relationships between the methods they use in the classroom and the preferred learning and interaction styles in their students' homes and communities. They are taught how to use various instructional strategies and assessment procedures sensitive to cultural and linguistic variations, and how to adapt classroom instruction and assessment to accommodate the cultural resources that their students bring to school.
• Element 11: Preservice education students are exposed to examples of the successful teaching of ethnic- and language-minority students.
• Element 12: Instruction is embedded in a group setting that provides both intellectual challenge and social …show more content…

Whenever possible, solutions are proposed. The study and practice of multicultural teacher education, however, is very much a work in progress. Teacher educators have taken a wide variety of approaches to the challenges posed by the education of teachers for diversity--as indicated by recent conferences of the National Association for Multicultural Education and recent issues of the Journal of Teacher Education (September-October 1995, Vol. 46, No. 4, and November-December 1995, Vol. 46, No. 5). Rather than offering prescriptions, Obstacles to Action alerts readers of what to expect when implementing the activities and experiences described in Implications for Action. Obstacles to Action also suggests heuristic strategies for thinking about problems that may be