Exploring student teachers’ development of intercultural understanding in teacher education practice

Abstract

Teachers’ intercultural understanding has a growing importance in teacher education. In a society with more diverse classrooms, there is an increasing need for teachers with a broad intercultural understanding. Student teachers who have had school practice in different cultural settings have a broader understanding of their multicultural pupils and are better equipped for related challenges and opportunities. This is paramount in classrooms including pupils of migrant and refugee backgrounds. In the field, there has been a growing understanding for this matter and there have been multiple studies of multicultural student teacher practice. However, further research is needed to understand the competence student teachers get from diverse school practice. Therefore, our focus is to explore to what extent student teachers can gain intercultural competence and professional development from practice in different cultural contexts.