Teaching for diversity, social justice and global awareness

This paper explores the problems and challenges of teaching for diversity, social justice and global awareness in initial teacher education. It addresses the issues of student teacher identity, the attitudes of students, and their approach to classroom practice. The authors argue that general attitudes to issues of diversity, must be placed within the context of changes in society and changing social attitudes. Understanding students' approaches to their praxis is also essential if we are to understand the impact of initiatives in initial teacher education. Few studies have examined the links between pre‐service teachers' attitudes and their classroom practices. Only by conducting such an analysis can any real insights be gained into how student teachers actually respond to issues of diversity and of practice. This paper presents the findings of the quantitative dimension of a multilevel, qualitative and quantitative research study on student teachers' attitudes to diversity and their preferred teaching s...