Diversity in Teacher Education: A Double Helix

Overview & Synopsis

Over the past 20 years, the literature in teacher education has built a discourse around diversity. Much of it is predicated on the vast multicultural education literature developing since the late 1970s, a literature that is very much activist- and advocacy-oriented. It is also a literature largely ignored by "traditional" academics, ostensibly because education is a low-status academic interest, and also because arguing against the multicultural education discourse is a very unpopular thing to do. In this article, the author surveys teacher education literature and finds that its recommended solution to the ever increasing diversity of the school population lies in reprogramming white teachers to affirm the values and learning styles of the cultures of the minorities they teach--despite the acknowledged lack of any proof of this method's efficacy in terms of educational outcomes. (Contains 26 footnotes.)