Over the past several decades, education systems in Australia and elsewhere have experienced a dramatic increase in student diversity. The diversification of diversity in schools can be attributed to the rapidly changing cultural-linguistic, socio-economic and religious composition of societies, as well as to the increasing recognition of differences in ability, gender and sexuality. The ‘superdiversity’ of the student population in Australian schools represents a plenitude of differences and their intersectionality. This presents major problems as well as opportunities for education systems as they seek to meet the unique needs of all students and improve school participation and student well-being. Although significant efforts have been directed towards building teacher knowledge and skills to work with diverse students, it is unclear how teachers become responsive to students’ differences. This paper reports the initial findings of a longitudinal project that aims to develop an original approach to building capabilities of teachers in conditions of ‘superdiversity’ (Vetrovec, 2007). By focusing on teacher capabilities, we explore real opportunities that Australian teachers have in order to teach responsively. Going beyond conventional approaches to evaluating the quality of teacher education, we aim to explore how teachers convert professional education into their capabilities of becoming a responsive educator. Hence, the project explores (1) the opportunities that teachers have to achieve a socially just education and (2) the space of teacher functionings, where their professional agency and freedom can be enabled or constrained by personal, social and institutional conversion factors. By drawing on a systematic literature review, interviews with the key stakeholders in responsive and inclusive education and a pilot survey, we have identified and selected a set of valued capabilities (Sen, 1993) required for responsive teaching and promoted in teacher education that can be used for the evaluation of whether teachers have achieved a sufficient range and depth of capabilities. That is, this line of inquiry has helped us develop a metric that can be used to measure teacher capabilities by identifying the enabling and constraining factors that influence the conversion of professional education into teacher functionings in schools. The paper, therefore, suggests that focusing on teachers’ ‘achieved functionings’ has a promising potential to address a gap in knowledge about teacher workforce development in conditions of superdiversity, rather than focusing solely on the quality of professional education that they receive.

Sen, A. (1993). Capability and well-being. In M. Nussbaum & A. Sen (Eds), The quality of life (pp. 30-53). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Vetrovec, S. (2007). Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(6), 1024-1052. doi:10.1080/01419870701599465