Global Crises, Social Justice, and Teacher Education

When the U.S. government released its 2007 census figures in January 2010, it reported that 12% of the U.S. population— more than 38 million people—were foreign born. First-generation people were now one out of every eight persons in the nation, with 80% coming from Latin America and Asia. This near-record transformation, one in which diasporic populations now constitute a large and growing percentage of communities throughout the nation and an ever-growing proportion of children in our schools, documents one of the most profound reasons that we must think globally about education. This transformation is actually something of which we should be proud. The United States and a number of other nations are engaged in a vast experiment that has rarely been attempted before. Can we build a nation and a culture from resources and people from all over the world? The impacts of these global population flows on education and on teacher education are visible all around us.