Making Sense of Infusing Linguistic Diversity Content into Teacher Education Course

Abstract

Teacher education serves as a crucial phase and component to address the issue and challenge of unpreparedness of mainstream teachers to work with the growing number of students from diverse backgrounds in the classrooms. This chapter presents the experience and perspective of a teacher educator who taught a teacher preparation course in the area of school psychology and was required to infuse English language learner (ELL) content in the course. The work focuses on the teacher educator's sense making of infusing the content based on her own personal and professional experiences and beliefs. Findings highlight the important role of personal experiences and beliefs and the active position of general education teacher educators in preparing teachers for culturally and linguistically diverse learners. Implications for professional development are also discussed.