‘Knowing Your Students’ in the Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Classroom

The population movement of globalization brings greater cultural and linguistic diversity (CALD) to communities and education systems. To address the growing diversity in school classrooms, beginning teachers need an expanded set of skills and attitudes to support effective learning. It is an expectation today that teachers know their students and how the students learn. It follows that lecturers and tutors should also know something of the cultural and linguistic profile of their pre-service teacher education students. This article reports a study in a university which examined its teacher education practice in this light. It assessed the curriculum provision of material related to cultural and linguistic diversity, the profile of the CALD characteristics of the undergraduate cohort, and attitudes and perceptions of the students, to teaching in a CALD classroom. The article considers initiatives that the teacher education program could introduce, to expand pre-service teacher capacities.