European societies are facing increasing diversity due to globalisation and the freedom of movement across the European Union member-states. Research from different disciplines such as sociology, political science, psychology and anthropology has highlighted the urgency to deal with the changing composition of societies on structural and content levels. This is especially true with increasing demands of participation and rising expectations of what democracy really means. At the same time the topic of migration is used as a particularly powerful demon in narrations of so called “replacement” and dynamics of social disruption in the context of conspiracy theories.

In this symposium we want to explore how teacher education has been responding to those changes in society and the classrooms in different countries. The TALIS 2018 study showed that many teachers report not being prepared for the linguistic, socio-cultural and religious diversity in their classrooms (OECD 2019). On top of that, especially pupils and teachers in classrooms without migration-related diversity can be expected to increase societal problems in the long run when they are not competent for a diverse society in the future. Therefore, competences for a multilingual, multireligious and multicultural society and professional environment are a question of survival and social cohesion for the EU countries as is the case for those outside the European Union. Educational disparities between students with and without migration background have been researched in the European countries and beyond for some time (Stevens and Dworkin 2019 on national research traditions) and international organizations such as the Council of Europe (2016), the European Commission (2019, Roth et al 2011) and the UNESCO (2018) have been publishing reports on curricular issues concerned with plurilingualism and intercultural learning and teacher education during the last decade.

In the European Commission’s report “Preparing Teachers for Diversity: The Role of Initial Teacher Education” (Dumcius et al 2017), which covers 37 countries/jurisdictions, it became clear that migration-related diversity in ITE-institutions was treated mostly as add-on and in optional courses. Mandatory courses were still rare, as was the integration of diversity content in a cross-sectional way throughout the curriculum. The three contributions in the symposium will  present more in-depth analyses of the specific competences relevant for migration-related diversity in teacher education in a country comparative view, with Schroedler/Wernike/Hammer focusing on multilingualism in several countries, Herzog-Punzenberger/Brown/Altrichter/Gardezi comparing Austria and Ireland concerning cultural diversity, while Petersen will report on changes having taken place in Denmark’s teacher education curriculum across the array of linguistic, cultural and religious diversity. Finally, the question which factors help to explain parallels and differences in the educational governance of migration related content in teacher education will be discussed.

April, D., D’Addio, A.D., Kubacka, K. and Smith, W.C. (2018) Issues of cultural diversity, migration, and displacement in teacher education programmes. Paper commissioned for the 2019 Global Education Monitoring Report: Migration, displacement and education: Building bridges, not walls. Council of Europe (2016) Guide for the development and implementation of curricula for plurilingual and intercultural education. Geneva. Dumcius, R., van Driel, B., Herzog-Punzenberger, B., Kerzil, J., Wood, E., Siarova, H., Sternadel, D., Tsutskiridze, L., & Buinauskas, D. (2017). Preparing teachers for diversity: the role of initial teacher education. Final report for DG Education, Youth, Sport and Culture of the European Commission. Vilnius: PPMI. European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice (2019). Integrating Students from Migrant Backgrounds into Schools in Europe: National Policies and Measures. Eurydice Report. Office of the European Union. Roth, H.-J., Duarte, J., Broeder, P., Stokmans, M. (2011) European Core Curriculum for Inclusive Academic Language Teaching. An instrument for Training Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers and Educators. Final Report to the Comenius Program of the European Commission. Stevens, P. & Dworkin, G. (2019) Palgrave Handbook on Race and Ethnic Inequalities in Education. OECD (2019) How education systems respond to cultural diversity in schools: New measures in TALIS 2018. Teaching in Focus #25. Paris: OECD Publishing.