Preservice and Inservice Diversity Courses

Overview

While diversity courses in preservice and inservice teacher education vary in terms of scope and content, the courses typically address the following:

Knowledge: what teachers know regarding the content they will teach, the context in which they will teach (urban, rural, or suburban), and the students they will teach. Diversity courses also tend to gauge and address the knowledge teachers have about curriculum design and instructional practices.

Skills: abilities of teachers, especially their ability to bridge theory with practice, to enact classroom practices, to think critically and analytically about issues, and to engage in different conversations about politically charged issues.

Dispositions and Attitudes: the mind-set, character, and outlook of teachers to teach diverse students effectively are also common components in diversity courses. Teachers' dispositions and attitudes have the potential to shape other aspects of their work with PreK–12 students, including their willingness to learn with their students, set high expectations for them, and recognize the assets that students bring into the classroom.

Beliefs: deeply held convictions about how the world works and for whom are also typically included in helping teachers build a repertoire for teaching diverse students. The idea is that teachers' beliefs shape their practices because teachers act on their beliefs.

Practices: what teachers do (i.e., through their instructional practices with PreK–12 students) is also a critical aspect of diversity courses. However, methods courses in teacher education typically address the practices aspect of teachers' work. While diversity courses address mind-sets, belief systems, and knowledge base among teachers, they tend to gauge teachers' thinking about their practices rather than focus exclusively on what teachers do with PreK–12 students. Courses typically discover what teachers may do in their practices with students.

While the five areas covered above can penetrate the conceptual and developmental needs of [Page 1699]teachers, there remain other important aspects. Although these areas are presented separately in an attempt to disentangle the importance of each of them, they run in confluence, which means that diversity courses are often designed to address the interrelated nature of these categories. Thus, it is difficult for diversity courses to cover the span of teacher qualities and characteristics necessary to prepare teachers for the diversity they will face in PreK–12 schools. In addition, because it is clear that teachers do not stop learning after they have completed their teacher education programs, most multicultural scholars believe that diversity courses should help teachers learn throughout their teaching careers to meet the ever-changing needs of their diverse learners. The range of information covered in and structures of diversity courses depend on (a) who the instructors of the courses are and their worldviews; (b) the alignment, expectations, and requirements of accreditation; and (c) the overall mission and vision of the teacher education program.

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