Diversity and Teacher Education

The concept of diversity has been foregrounded in educational discourse, since inequalities, including educational inequalities, are constitutive of and are, in turn constituted by diversities. This is the starting point of the argument in this chapter, en route to presenting new ways of thinking about diversity, social justice, difference and solidarity in the context of teacher education. It takes issue with the ghettoized construction of equality, amidst empirical evidence that indicates that South African society’s deeply embedded prejudices are antithetical to social justice. We thus take the approach that it is more sustainable and desirable to interpret and anchor social justice within a conceptual frame that logically links difference and diversity with the political notion of solidarity, so human agency can be advanced. Derrida’s reworked notions of hospitality, diversity and difference are rearticulated with the political purposes of social justice and solidarity. Applying these constructs to re-examine findings on teacher education, we conclude that teacher education/training should not simply be aimed at managing the expressed or demonstrated diversity in the classroom, but rather at how to engage with diversity as an operative notion for social justice, and solidarity with humanity, and human suffering.