CHAPTER 8: Preparing Teachers for Tomorrow’s America

Preparing teachers for the challenges of diversity is one of the most pressing and complex challenges we face in creating schools for tomorrow’s America and indeed for tomorrow’s global society. This chapter makes the case for why this is such a critical challenge in terms of the convergence of two global trends in demographics and policy attention to teacher quality. Then we describe and illustrate five major ways that teacher education programs and projects across the country are working to prepare teachers for diversity.

In many nations throughout the world, there is increasing diversity in the school population as well as increasing recognition of the challenges posed by diversity (Banks, 2009; Castles, 2009; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2006). In the United States, there have been enormous increases in immigration over the last decade, bringing large numbers of students whose first language is not English into the public schools and as well as a heightened awareness of diversity. This has added to a situation where inequities based on the marginalization of indigenous and formerly enslaved minorities have been emphasized since the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s (Banks, 2009).