How teacher educators deal with diversity : a Flemish perspective

Despite their crucial role, Flemish teacher educators remain an under-researched professional group with particularly limited fundamental knowledge on how they deal with diversity (Vanderlinde et al., 2021). This is rather surprising since Flemish policy documents increasingly stress the need for teacher education to prepare teachers to teach in diverse contexts. The most recent policy report on the evaluation of the Flemish teacher education programmes highlights that student teachers feel unprepared to deal with diversity. Moreover, the same report states that teacher educators themselves also feel rather uncertain to deal with diversity (Evalo, 2012). Like in research, teacher educators are given little attention in Flemish policy documents. Provision for their professional development by the government is today rather ad hoc than structural (Tack et al., 2018). Nevertheless, policy makers have started to acknowledge the importance of teacher educators and their professional development to guarantee qualitative education. Empirical research on Flemish teacher educators’ dealing with diversity is urgent to further research, policy and practice. However, such research can only be conducted after some focus on conceptual clarification, since there is little conceptual consensus in the literature and in policy on the term ‘dealing with diversity’. As such, this study focuses on two research objectives: to map the Flemish policy background in which teacher educators deal with diversity (RO1), and to create a conceptual framework on dealing with diversity by teacher educators (RO2). To target RO1, a document analysis of existing policies was performed. It resulted in a better understanding of the national context in which higher education-based teacher educators foster their dealing with diversity. To target RO2, a systematic literature review was conducted, consulting the ERIC and Web of Science database. We clustered practices regarding dealing with diversity as described in the literature, creating a conceptual framework made up of five clusters of practices: (1) creating inclusive learning environments, (2) challenging student teachers’ frames of reference, (3) explicit modeling for diversity, (4) challenging one’s own frames of reference, and (5) raising societal sensitivity to diversity. This study adds to the field by providing (1) the start of a common language to discuss teacher educators’ dealing with diversity, and (2) opportunities for professional development initiatives to focus on specific practices, without being prescriptive.

Jaar van publicatie:2021