Summarise the following:
Introduction
In today’s world, teachers’ work is more complex than ever before. This is due to changes within the last 50 years in global economic forces and highly competitive production modes; the merging of finance, trade and communication knowledges; rapidly advancing technologies; political instability; and environmental concerns.
There has been an intensification of migration and labour markets, bringing into contact diverse languages, cultures and identities in ways never before experienced (Romain, 2011). Those living in the Antipodes have not been untouched by changing global forces. These both result in and coincide with a local range of social, cultural and political complexities. These include, but are not limited to, economic disparities in and between postcodes; continued social disadvantage of Indigenous Australians; intolerance towards religious and other forms of diversity; changing mores in rela- tion to sexually and gender diverse people; the rise of single-parent families and changing family constellations; and a political imperative that reduces access to social services, which have been increasingly privatised. These realities are reflected in a complex web of social and cultural relations in educational settings, which affect learning, teaching and professional interactions.
Such complexities question the efficacy of pre-service teachers’ common claims that to teach equitably simply involves ‘treating all students the same’ regardless of diversity and that if an individual student ‘just tried harder’ then they would undoubtedly ‘succeed’. Although in our experience pre-service teachers believe that this position is right and just, as Kumashiro alludes to in the above quote, it fails to recognise the impact of broader social and economic policy on individu- als and communities, the inevitable diversities apparent in twenty-first-century classrooms and, as a result, the pre-service teacher’s potential ‘complicity with oppression’ (Kumashiro, 2002, p. 1). Such claims fail to consider the ways that, for example, children, youth, adults and communities differentially experience advan- tage or disadvantage; are able to access and/or activate power in various contexts; experience technologies of surveillance, silencing, in/visibility, and/or resistance; are able to give voice; and/or demonstrate their agency. Often taken for granted and therefore unquestioned is the reality that those with greater access to power and privilege, even the privilege of not being seen as ‘different’ or ‘marked’, are Anglo, English-speaking, Christian, heterosexual, middle-class, adult and male identities – or what is constituted in Western societies as the ‘normal’ person and the standard by which all others are judged. This is the person to whom education most often caters and is reflected in curriculum knowledges, pedagogical practices and educational policy.
