Have conceptual reforms (and one anti‐reform) in preservice teacher education improved the education of multicultural, multilingual children and youth?

Abstract

This article examines three conceptual reforms in US teacher education (competency‐based teacher education (CBTE), reflective teacher education (RTE) and constructivist teacher education (CTE)) for their effects on the education of multicultural, multilingual youth, as well as considering alternative certification (AC), known here as an ‘anti‐reform’. The author suggests that although each reform made incremental improvements in the ways that preservice teachers are prepared to teach multilingual and multicultural learners, none significantly altered the education of under‐served children and youth. For instance, CTE points out the importance of prior knowledge, but fails in connecting its core concepts with culturally relevant instruction. CBTE, while also generally failing to alter teacher preparation for multicultural learners, did try to make explicit connections for preservice teachers. RTE made explicit the moral consequences of working in diverse communities but fell short when it altered the apprenticeship–mentor relationship. AC of teachers is presented as the work of neo‐liberals whose largely successful efforts to deregulate teacher preparation offer both an improvement and retrenchment for urban children and youth. Finally, the article links the field’s focus on the preparation of teachers for diverse students and the moral dimension of teacher education, concluding that such a connection may be the only way to maintain the professional school preparation of teachers.

Keywords:

• Multicultural education
• Reform
• Teacher education

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my colleagues Brad Olsen and Christine Sleeter for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts. Any remaining shortcomings are mine alone.

Notes

1. Teacher educators, as well as select other social scientists, agree to a critical and foundational knowledge required for classroom management. And dozens of theories of sociology, for instance, can be applied to the social management of children in group settings. However, when such knowledge is rendered as a ‘programme’ such as Assertive Field, the chance that any deep, theoretical knowledge will emerge is slight.

2. Recently, several teacher educators (e.g. Zeichner, 2003) have reflected upon the state of the field with an eye towards its ‘democratising’ effects. Such self‐examination, especially Zeichner’s thoughtful review, motivated this article. I believe that this article adds to this recent round of reviews but with more focus placed on how reforms in teacher education have directly affected MML.

3. Teacher education in Europe and elsewhere never took CBTE very seriously. Continental educators, in particular, never embraced behaviourism as the USA and the UK did.

4. Some may argue that beginning teachers in the Midwest began their careers in ‘growth’ states with large proportions of MML simply because there were few jobs at home.

5. This is not to say that teacher education does remain influenced by behavioural principles. On the contrary, some teacher education programmes, especially when the topic turns to ‘classroom management’, are quite willing to instruct preservice teachers in strategies based largely on behavioural principles.

6. On the other hand, we have evidence that even when teacher preparation challenges the educational histories of its charges, teachers‐to‐be tend to believe and act on their experience rather than research or professional opinion (Knowles & Holt‐Reynolds, 1991).