Multiculturalism and teacher education: Dimension, possibilities and challenges in the contemporary era

Abstract

The present study is an essay that has been developed from a delivered conference about multiculturalism, understood as a set of answers to cultural diversity and to the challenge of prejudices, in the educational field. It develops three main arguments, namely: multiculturalism should not be treated as an add-on to the curriculum, or even to a perspective that reduces it to extra-curricular projects; it is relevant to consider ways in which the curricular construction could link the multicultural perspective to different fields of knowledge and to the disciplines of teacher education; the linkage between curriculum and research in a multicultural perspective can arguably boost initial and continuing teacher education in transformative approaches.