Who are the teachers and who are the learners? teacher education for culturally responsive pedagogy

The focus of this chapter is a response to the publication of Teaching Scotland’s Future (Scottish Government, 2011) a review into teacher education in Scotland. The report confirmed the importance of maintaining teacher education in universities, recognised the career long nature of teacher education, urged greater partnership between universities and schools and recommended that pre-service teacher education became more widely focused than the current pedagogical content. The Scottish Government subsequently endorsed the recommendations of the report (Scottish Government, 2011) and changes in the nature of teacher education at all levels are currently underway. Neither the report nor the government response made mention of what ‘Scotland’s Future’ might look like and the author argues that teaching in this future will need to evolve to be more responsive to linguistic and cultural diversity in the schools of Scotland.