40 Questions about Social Justice and Diversities for Teacher Education

This book brings together forty genuine questions raised by student teachers in Finnish education, sparking reflection and insight into education and wider issues amid the complexity, diversity and uncertainty of today's classrooms and ever-changing world.

What does it mean to teach social justice in today's complex and divided world? How can educators acknowledge and value the multiple diversities that students bring to the classroom, while also responding to conflicting expectations from curricula, colleagues and the wider community? This book offers no definitive answers. Instead, it invites readers to engage in a different kind of conversation revolving around gender, discomfort, interculturality, neutrality, intersectionality, and structural racism. Each chapter takes up ten of the forty questions, grounding the responses in real classroom situations and drawing on critical theories and decolonial perspectives. Written collectively by five experienced teacher educators and researchers, this book moves beyond prescriptive checklists and shallow understandings of social justice, diversity, and interculturality. The authors argue that meaningful change requires ongoing critical reflection, structural awareness and the courage to ask better questions.

This inspiring book will attract a wide spectrum of readers, including experienced teachers, student teachers, teacher educators and scholars interested in teacher education, diversity, social justice education and intercultural studies.

Fred Dervin disrupts conventional thinking about interculturality and global interaction. Based at the University of Helsinki, Finland, this celebrated interculturalist offers bold, interdisciplinary perspectives on intercultural teacher education and training. With more than 300 publications to his name, Professor Dervin empowers readers to critically rethink identity and language as well as transform how we engage interculturally.

Katariina Stenberg (Adjunct professor, PhD, MEd) is a University Lecturer at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki. Her research interests include student teachers’ professional development, teacher identity and teacher education. She also has extensive experience as a primary school teacher, having worked in both field schools and the university training school.

Sonja Anttila (PhD, MEd) is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on LGBTQ families, gender and educational equality. Her scholarship challenges conventional assumptions within home economics by integrating critical gender perspectives. She has taught student teachers and in-service educators about gender diversity, supervised theses and worked as a teacher in higher education, basic education and community colleges.

Jaana Pesonen (PhD) is a University Lecturer at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki. Passionate about teacher education, her research and teaching focus on cultural studies, norm-critical pedagogies and the privatisation and marketisation of education.

Anna-Leena Riitaoja (Ph.D., Docent) is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Educational Sciences (University of Helsinki) and the Chair of the Diversity Council for the Una Europa Alliance. Her work critically examines how educational and social institutions can foster social justice. Drawing on critical and decolonial theories, her research interests include curriculum studies and the complexities of diversity in educational practice.