Many preservice teachers experienced a profound sense of isolation while going through their credential programs due to school closures and social distancing protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the pandemic highlighted discrepancies present in educational settings, including those between Black and Indigenous People of Color…

Workforce development in the K-12 educational setting, including the preparation of new teachers, faces multiple challenges today. These challenges include an ongoing teacher shortage and the lack of a coordinated educational preparation pipeline. Also problematic are the numerous obstacles on the path to teacher credentialing in states like…

Despite efforts to recruit educators of color, the teaching profession continues to disproportionately reflect the diverse students served in schools across the country. Recognizing the unique obstacles and barriers for potential Black credential candidates combined with the need to diversify the educator pipeline and workforce, California State…

When professional development in diversity is provided to educators in the field, it usually targets classroom practice with the intent of closing the achievement gap. These efforts are critical. But work should not stop there because culture underlies every policy, practice, and procedure in the school and influences every thought, interaction,…

This article explores a university's Urban Teacher Education Program (UTEP) and its success not just in recruiting, preparing, retaining, and graduating its students, but in likewise leading to employment and retention as teachers in urban schools. It focuses on critical aspects of the program, including recruitment of diverse candidates,…

Many teachers teach undergraduate and graduate teacher education courses that include a cultural hodgepodge of future teachers who differ not only in ethnicity, but in age, sexual preference, religion, language, and a host of other microcultural areas. Occasionally it is clear within the first couple of class sessions that these groups are…

Presents one teacher educator's experiences working to transform the classroom by telling his own stories and coming out to his students early in the semester. The author believes that by sharing his story with his students, he shows them how to embrace freedom and enter into communication with each other in states of being, not seeming. (SM)

Examines how teacher educators can confront diversity while addressing preservice teachers' individual uniquenesses, describing one university's required course on pluralism. By critically examining their histories, educators learned the importance of going beyond issues of race and ethnicity. Four common themes emerged from examining educational…

One New Jersey school district responded to racism and educational bias by implementing prejudice reduction initiatives. The community had been all white until the mid-1990s, when it became one-third minority. This changed school and community social dynamics and resulted in incidents of violence with racial overtones. Minority parents perceive…

Many educators today have been unpretentious about regarding mainstream thought as the supreme channel through which knowledge is disseminated. This may be the product of minds that appreciate the mainstream's intellectual contribution, positively or otherwise, to humanity. However, the growing cultural diversity of the United States makes it…

With the heightened interest in multiculturalism in higher education, universities and colleges have sought to become multicultural institutions by recruiting faculty with diverse cultural backgrounds. Consequently the faculty of formerly predominantly White colleges throughout the country have become more diverse and it is no longer unusual to…

Investigated the perceptions and images of diverse student teachers in an elementary science methods course about what constituted a scientist. Data from surveys, interviews, and observations indicated that students displayed common stereotypic features of what constituted a scientist (white males working in laboratories) and demonstrated how…

Examined the impact of the Teaching as a Career Workshop, which stressed the need for minority teachers, on high school students' perceptions about teaching. Participants considered it important for people of color to become teachers and believed the workshop influenced them to select teaching careers. High school and college students had similar…

In the last ten years, many colleges, universities, boards, and agencies have jumped on the diverse faculty/staff hiring bandwagon not only by issuing resolutions, policies, and mandates but also by inventing programs, initiatives, and strategies all intended to increase the number of faculty and staff of color in predominantly White institutions.…

Teachers must be prepared to work in diverse schools. Preservice education programs and teacher educators must be culturally proficient to train them. Notes strategies for recruiting diverse faculty into education departments, discussing faculty mentoring and support, evaluation of faculty of color, teacher certification mandates versus…