Learning to be a culturally responsive teacher in the Global North: a call for critical teacher education

In the last 30 years, unprecedented levels of mobility worldwide have meant that culturally homogenous classrooms are rare in most places in the Global North. It is therefore imperative that all teachers develop a repertoire of effective and culturally responsive pedagogies. Ninetta Santoro draws on data from a study that investigated the attitudes of a cohort of Scottish student-teachers towards culturally diverse classrooms and their perceptions of their readiness to teach in such contexts. She highlights the challenges the student-teachers experienced in understanding their students, and understanding themselves as professionals embedded within dominant Northern cultural discourses. Santoro concludes by suggesting the need for critical teacher education and the diversification of the teacher educator profession to include those from the Global South.