PRESERVICE TEACHER-EDUCATION AND THE NEGOTIATION OF SOCIAL DIFFERENCE

This paper reports on the results of a research project on 35 teacher candidates in a Canadian Faculty of Education. It challenges the usual explanations of why prospective teachers are ineffective in teaching children of racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds by installing macro and meso levels of social organization that reticulate with pres ervice teacher education. It reveals that not only do teacher candidat es defy generalization as a group, but their positions on education an d social difference are replete with inconsistencies even on an indivi dual basis. The process of socialization is fraught with tensions that arise from expectations for teacher candidates to adapt to environmen ts that are themselves embroiled in unresolved and long-standing dilem mas. How teacher candidates negotiate social differences cannot be und erstood apart from tile tensions they encounter that derive from a ran ge of sources, and from the ambivalent ways they cope with those tensi ons.