Understanding Teacher Preparation and Cultural Competence

Understanding how teachers are currently being prepared to teach students from various backgrounds is a beginning step in the process of creating a model for a comprehensive culturally sustaining teacher education program. Such a program could be a vanguard for producing educators (those who plan on going into the classroom and those who will go into educational leadership) who can build the expertise and feel efficacious enough to work toward revamping the American education system which is currently failing our children from multiple backgrounds.

Education in the U.S. is culturally homogenous and not competitive on an international scale. Here, teacher preparation is identified as the proverbial key toward unlocking impactful systemic equitable change in the realm of education. This book provides context for the current cultural climate of teacher education in the United States, and provides direction for next steps in enacting change.