Diversifying the Teacher Workforce: Preparing and Retaining Highly Effective Teachers

Diversifying the Teacher Workforce critically examines efforts to diversify the teaching force and narrow the demographic gap between who teaches and who populates U.S. classrooms. While the demographic gap is often invoked to provide a needed rationale for preparing all teachers, and especially White teachers, to work with students of color, it is far less often invoked in an effort to examine why the teaching force remains predominantly White in the first place. Based on work the National Association for Multicultural Education is engaged in on this phenomenon, this edited collection brings together leading scholars to look closely at this problem. They examine why the teaching force is predominantly White from historical as well as contemporary perspectives, showcase and report available data on a variety of ways this problem is being tackled at the pre-service and teacher credentialing levels, and examine how a diverse and high-quality teaching force can be retained and thrive. This book is an essential resource for any educator interested in exploring race within the context of today’s urban schools.

Christine E. Sleeter is Professor Emerita in the College of Professional Studies at California State University Monterey Bay, USA.

La Vonne I. Neal is Dean of the College of Education at Northern Illinois University, USA.

Kevin K. Kumashiro is Dean of the School of Education at the University of San Francisco, USA.