In middle school, adolescents are particularly focused on peer interaction to help form their identities. For marginalized students, especially refugees, peer interaction is especially important. To be successful in schools and gain cultural and social capital, refugee students must learn and internalize the specific norms of their classrooms. In…

The belief that there is one right way or method of inquiry to pursue truth as it is constructed has been rejected by postmodernism. Postmodernism challenges and opens up the central idea that only one set of limits are possible in supporting professional practice. Postmodernism designs a way to look at concepts through the context of meaning. The…

Over the past three decades, the K-12 student population in the United States has become ethnically and linguistically diverse. Not so with the vast majority of teachers, who are generally white, middle class, and monolingual English speaking. Successfully teaching students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds requires a new way…

For decades, educators and researchers have observed practices of educational inequality in U.S. schools. In a multicultural democracy, schooling without educational equality constitutes injustice. This article explores the limitation of the current traditional teacher education in preparing highly competent and socially conscious teachers needed…

This article describes the author's concerns, as a brand new teacher, about competence and failure which manifested themselves in a focus on the body. It discusses the effects of diversity among teachers and students. While the author's fears corresponded to the situation, given that she would be subject to the specific and often intense gaze of…

A critical issue in teacher education today is the mismatch between racially homogenous teachers and students from increasingly diverse cultural backgrounds. In the United States, the student population is becoming more diverse while the teaching force is becoming increasingly monocultural, white, and middle class. Current data on the teaching…