Examining Teacher Candidate Resistance to Diversity: What Can Teacher Educators Learn?

Abstract

How teachers interpret and respond to diverse students’ cultural identities is critical to students’ success. Therefore, teacher educators require candidates to gain experience with multicultural populations during fieldwork. What can teacher educators learn from candidate perceptions of these experiences? This study features a case analysis of a fascinating candidate’s descriptions of multicultural school experiences. The candidate negated the need to be culturally responsive by inaccurately simplifying culture and using the binary constructs of “same” and “different”. The article contends that educators must provide a platform for the deconstruction of “same” and “different” and offers a visual model as a pedagogical discussion tool.