Introduction to the special issue ‘Normalising difference in teacher education: national and international perspectives’

In recent years, classrooms have become complex spaces where the perceived homogeneity of the past has been overtaken by global trends that include migration and the increase in pupils learning English as an additional language (EAL) (Walton and Osman 2018).

Educational initiatives across Anglophone countries have sought to ensure non-discriminatory policies and practices for linguistically and culturally diverse pupils who do not speak the dominant language of the country in which they now live. Across educational settings in these countries, there has been a common educational commitment to inclusive policies as the most valued approach to promoting educational achievement and equal opportunities for diverse pupil populations. Despite these policy initiatives, teachers feel inadequately prepared to acknowledge, understand, value and build on the diverse social, linguistic and cultural capital which now characterize school settings (e.g. Lucas 2011; Darling-Hammond and Lieberman 2012; Foley et al. 2018).

Research shows that in order to be sufficiently responsive to difference in terms of race, class, gender, language, cultural, ethnicity, and religion, which are defining features of today’s classrooms, teachers and teacher educators need to be cognisant of the discourses surrounding diversity and inclusion within educational policies and practices (e.g. Piller 2016; Macedo 2020; Dei 2019). While these categories have allowed us to advocate the need for greater social justice and equity for all, the discourses surrounding them have become boundaried, and tend to reinforce social categories such that students’ and educators’ identities are fixed, thereby positioning them as outsiders to a hegemonic and dominant mainstream ‘norm’ (Carrim 2018).

Hall, Held, and McGrew (1992) recognize that there is a need to move beyond these fixed notions of diversity and inclusion and to recognize identities as fluid, changing, evolving and in the process of becoming. Such notions help us to acknowledge that there are multiple perspectives and multiple ways of being in the world. Diversity can therefore be conceptualised as ‘an integral aspect of humanity rather than a series of categorical distinctions that differentiate and separate individuals and groups’ (Florian and Pantic 2016, 1). A crucial step for teacher education is to enable teachers to see themselves as part of the diverse profile of the classroom in order to decentre and pluralise the monolingual, monocultural habitus that so often frames educational policies, practices and teacher professionalism.

To address some of these issues, this Special Issue has forged an alliance across national and international boundaries (Australia, Canada, United States, England and Scotland) to look for ways for teacher educators to be aware of the complexity, multiplicity and pluralisation of diversity in order to address the increasing demands that teachers face as they seek to be responsive to cultural and linguistic difference in their classrooms.

In the opening piece, Foley, Anderson, Hancock and Conteh explore the extent to which student teachers in England are enabled to construct identities that are consonant with the opportunities and challenges of current multilingual classrooms.

Harklau and Ford examine recent U.S. language education policies regarding English learners (ELs) and their teachers using an interpretive policy analysis theoretical lens incorporating an organizational sensemaking perspective.

In their contribution, Toohey and Smythe focus on the Canadian context and propose that posthuman and decolonzing perspectives on difference might provide a foundation for EAL teacher education programmes.

Scarino, through an exploration of examples of teachers’ work with students in Australia, considers (a) the mediating role of languages and cultures in language learning, and (b) the need for an interpretive, reflective and reflexive stance towards learning, highlighting how these notions pertain to both student and teacher learning.

Leung focuses on the ways in which professional language teacher knowledge has changed over time, paying particular attention to the disciplinary content bases, and the likely influences to current research in language education and applied linguistics on our understanding of EAL pedagogy.

Finally, Liddicoat provides an overall discussion of the key themes across the articles within this special issue.

This special issue takes difference as a central point of departure and brings together contributions by established scholars in the field of language teacher education who address the sites, practices and narratives in which difference is encountered. To take conversations around teacher education forward, the articles within this special issue allow us to gain insights into the commonalities and differences in teacher education for pupils learning EAL internationally. It also demonstrates how different conceptual frames bring fresh insights into the social and educational policies and practices in EAL education, and points to potentially productive strategies for improving EAL teacher and student education.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Linda Harklau whose panoramic view and long-term commitment to language teacher education ignited the initial discussions and collaboration towards a special issue journal. I would also like to thank all of the authors for their contribution to this volume.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).