Addressing Diversity in Language Teacher Education: Perspectives on Practicum

Introduction

As the dynamics of the classrooms across the world are changing, so is the teaching profession. Today, the teaching profession “is becoming more and more complex, the demands placed upon teachers are increasing, and the environments in which they work are becoming more and more challenging” (European Parliament, 2014, p. 13). Teacher education programs need to train teachers to maintain and sustain high-quality education to address growingly diverse student populations in the classrooms from several dimensions including social class, socio-economic status, ethnicity, language, religion, disability, sexuality, and special education needs (Bartolo & Smyth, 2009). The issue is exacerbated by the teachers’ lack of confidence regarding their knowledge and ability to understand and work effectively with students who are ‘diverse’ (Rowan et al., 2021). Such a lack of understanding brings about educational disparities that affect teachers’ work and students’ lives, placing more demands on the teachers’ abilities to build relationships with students (Bartolo & Smyth, 2009). Teachers’ limited understandings, experiences, and knowledge base about students coming to classrooms from different backgrounds (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2010) cause some student groups to benefit more from schooling and educational experiences while leaving others behind (Rowan et al., 2021).

Much as the conceptualizations around diverse students change ever so increasingly, the issue is not new. Many review studies held forth the increasingly diverse classrooms in teacher education over the past few decades (Achinstein & Barrett, 2004; Hollins & Guzman, 2005; Mills & Ballantyne, 2016; among many others). However, as the concept of ‘diverse’ is diverse, so is the literature on diverse classrooms and addressing diversity in teacher education. In a recent review of 209 peer-reviewed articles written between 2009-2019, Rowan et al. (2021) identify constraints linked to the contexts of teacher education, pre-service teachers, and teacher educators, providing suggestions centring on what it means to prepare prospective teachers for teaching about, to, and for diversity. They also note that there is not much research in the literature about how teacher educators’ knowledge base allows them to consider the question of how they can do better to address the issue of diverse learners. As they argue, “little attention is given to the ways that teacher educators select, access, reflect critically on, and evaluate various standpoints about diversity and select epistemic aims” (Rowan et al., 2011, p. 149).

In the case of language teacher education, educating teachers for diverse classrooms in terms of cultural and linguistic differences is one of the global concerns of today’s world, where students in the language classrooms may not share the dominant language as their home and heritage language (Gearon et al., 2009). From a pedagogical perspective, this situation creates tension and challenge for language education (Gearon et al., 2009), and we believe that the issue needs addressing in initial language teacher programs to prepare effective language teachers for diversity-aware teaching practice.