ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the authors address the role of initial teacher preparation (ITP) in the challenging task of preparing resilient and well-equipped teachers for multicultural schools. Importantly, there is some evidence that teacher training for culturally responsive teaching can be effective, but the evidence is limited. In the first part, the authors focus on the cognitive, emotional, and pedagogical components that ITP should consider and promote when preparing future teachers for youth needs in multicultural societies. In the second part, they present guidelines and evaluative questions to effectively assess the efforts to improve teacher preparation for diversity, and synthesize trends in empirical findings across three levels of ITP organizational structures: the individual, activity, and institutional level.