Equal Rights in the Classroom? The role of teacher education in ensuring equality of educational opportunities

Abstract

This paper considers the specific subsection of Equal Rights that seeks to ensure equal educational opportunities for all children of whatever ethnic and cultural background. The paper is structured around firstly a synoptic review of the development of multicultural/antiracist approaches and strategies in education and their implications for initial and inservice teacher education, with emphasis on the political context of these developments; and secondly, the identification of a ‘model’ teacher education institution, ‘Eden’, and an indication of the procedures and courses offered by this paradigm institution.

We felt and sometimes recognised ... that our teachers had no respect for us as people capable of learning, of finding the world compelling and wanting to know it. (Hanif Kureshi, The Guardian, November, 1991)