16 Key Elements of Effective Teacher Education for Diversity

Zeichner (1993) identifies the following key elements for educating teachers for diversity:

"Admissions procedures screen students on the basis of cultural sensitivity and a commitment to the education of all students, especially poor students of color who frequently do not experience success in school.

Students are helped to develop a clearer sense of their own ethnic and cultural identities.

Students are helped to examine their attitudes toward other ethnocultural groups.

Students are taught about the dynamics of prejudice and racism and about how to deal with them in the classroom.

Students are taught about the dynamics of privilege and economic oppression and about school practices that contribute to the reproduction of societal inequalities.

The teacher education curriculum addresses the histories and contributions of various ethnocultural groups.

Students are given information about the characteristics and learning styles of various groups and individuals and are taught about the limitations of this information.

The teacher education curriculum gives much attention to sociocultural research knowledge about the relationships among language, culture, and learning.

Students are taught various procedures by which they can gain information about the communities represented in their classrooms.

Students are taught how to assess the relationships between the methods they use in the classroom and the preferred learning and interaction styles in their students' homes and communities.

Students are taught how to use various instructional strategies and assessment procedures sensitive to cultural and linguistic variations and how to adapt classroom instruction and assessment to accommodate the cultural resources that their students bring to school.

Students are exposed to examples of the successful teaching of ethnic- and language-minority students.

Students complete community field experiences with adults and/or children of other ethnocultural groups with guided reflections.

Students complete practicum and/or student teaching experiences in schools serving ethnic- and language-minority students.

Students live and teach in a minority community (immersion).

Instruction is embedded in a group setting that provides both intellectual challenge and social support." (p. 24)

Originally published in Educating Teachers for Cultural Diversity (NCRTL Special Report) by Kenneth M. Zeichner, 1993, East Lansing, MI: National Center for Research on Teacher Learning. Used by permission of the National Center for Research on Teacher Learning.

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