Chapter 16: The Education of Pre-Service Teachers as Future Boundaryspanners for Social Justice

This chapter focuses on a teacher education program in Finland. We explain how pre-service teachers become future boundary-spanners through formal activities such as social justice-related courses and the school-university partnership (SUP) network during their five-year master’s program. The aim of the teacher education program is to educate pre-service teachers to transform theoretical knowledge relating to social justice into practice in elementary schools. The pre-service teachers act as formal boundary-spanners by bringing social justice theory, recent research, and practices acquired at the university into schools. Their development into future boundary-spanners is illustrated by examples from a small-scale evaluative survey and pre-service teacher learning portfolios. Developmental needs for teacher education and school-university partnership network activities in our work to educate preservice teachers as future boundary-spanners for social justice are discussed.