Session Information
07 SES 12 A, Global Teaching: Southern Perspectives on Working with Diversity
Symposium
Contribution
In the last thirty years, unprecedented levels of global mobility have meant that culturally homogenous classrooms are rare in most places in the Global North. In this chapter I adopt Connell's use of the terms, ‘Northern’ and ‘Southern’, "… not to name a sharply bounded category of states or societies, but to emphasise relations – authority, exclusion and inclusion, hegemony, partnership, sponsorship, appropriation …" (Connell, 2007, viii-ix). In Northern countries and contexts, including Europe, Scandinavia, the USA, Australia and Canada for example, the rate of demographic change has been significant. In some countries, it has been unparalleled (OECD, 2013). Given the cultural diversity present in many of the world's classrooms, all teachers, regardless of their current geographical location, need to develop culturally responsive pedagogies. This means holding high expectations of culturally and linguistically diverse students, respecting and understanding their cultural values, knowledge, practices and histories, and designing culturally sensitive assessment (Griner and Stewart 2013; Darling-Hammond 2012). In this paper, I report on a study that investigated the attitudes of Scottish student-teachers towards culturally diverse classrooms and their perceptions of their readiness to teach in such contexts. A mixed-methods approach to the data collection was used; a survey of 329 student-teachers in a teaching degree in one Scottish university and individual in-depth semi-structured interviews with 12 student-teachers. Data collection elicited information about the students-teachers’ backgrounds, their understandings of the nature of cultural diversity in Scottish schools, their experience with culturally and linguistically diverse students and whether they felt well prepared to teach them. I highlight the challenges the student-teachers experienced in understanding their students, and understanding themselves as professionals embedded within dominant Northern cultural discourses. I conclude by suggesting the need for critical teacher education and the diversification of the teacher educator profession to include those from the Global South.
References
Connell, R. 2007. Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge In Social Science. Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin. Darling-Hammond, L. 2012. Powerful Teacher Education: Lessons from Exemplary Programs. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley and Sons. Griner, A. & Stewart, M. 2013. Addressing the Achievement Gap and Disproportionality Through the Use of Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices. Urban Education, 48 (4), 585-621. OECD. 2013. Country statistical profiles: Key tables from OECD, doi: 10.1787/csp-isl-table-2013-2-en
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