ABSTRACT
The unprecedented rate of global mobility in the past few decades has resulted in the ever-increasing number of superdiverse students in North American schools. However, there has been minimal research on how to prepare teachers to address transnationalism in K–12 school classrooms. In light of this urgent need, this chapter discusses how teacher education might prepare new generations of teachers for the growing complexity brought on by the increasing trend of transnationalism in K–12 schools. The chapter unpacks the sociocultural, socioeconomic, and sociopolitical complexity that characterizes the superdiverse students and illustrates the experiences of three divergent groups of transnational students in schools: those of involuntary immigrants/refugees, transient migrant students/sojourners, and transilient global elites. The chapter then outlines the instructional, ideological, and structural challenges that transnationalism brought into light in teachers’ classrooms and suggests a genuine “critical transnational curriculum” for teacher preparation that engages preservice teachers with understandings of transnationalism, acquisition of pedagogical skills to value and support students’ multiple identities and transnational educational assets, and development of agency and advocacy for change for superdiverse students in their classrooms.
