ABSTRACT
This chapter reports the findings of a recent national survey of teacher education provision for the increasingly plural society of Australia, and discusses the implications for policymakers and the profession. The cultural and linguistic diversity of students underscores the inappropriateness of an exclusively Anglocentric, monocultural curriculum. Educational practice is notoriously resistant to change, and this is reflected in the limited improvements in teacher education a decade later. Despite the inclusion of ‘cultural understandings’ in the key competencies with which all Australian students should graduate, Australian teacher education institutions are slow to take up the challenge of providing systematic and adequate courses in multicultural and anti‐racist education for teachers. In 1992, the authors carried out a national study of teacher education faculties in Australia. Thirty‐four faculties participated in the study in which data were collected by individual telephone interviews and follow‐up correspondence.
