It is the case that in a very diverse society such as ours the student teacher cannot
research all the different cultural groups with whom they must engage in the course
of their professional lives. It is not necessary. If they can only learn to vacate the
high ground of privilege or respectfully ask the oppressed (Freire 2000 ) they can
transpose these skills time without number. It is thefirst time that is the hardest, and
we as teacher educators have to engineer that happening while we are able to—or it
may never happen.
31.8 Student Teacher Research into Existing Material
on the Beliefs and Culture of Migrant Groups
One of the things that shocks the ITE researcher when they really begin to inquire, in
a Freirean manner (Freire 2000 ), about the ways of seeing of their immigrant stu-
dents, is the profundity of the difference, the distance between their own assump-
tions as to what matters and how the world is, and those of their migrant students.
The research does not have to be extensive to yield this result—an interview with a
very small group of students or parents will do it. The spoken answers however may
well make more sense if they are read in conjunction with sociological, historical or
anthropological academic work which may alert the student researcher to deeper
meaning.‘Where we once belonged’for instance, the title of a book by Figiel
( 1996 ), a Samoan author, does not yield its full meaning unless read in conjunction
with the Samoan view of collective life—as Tamasese et al. ( 1998 ) say‘The Samoan
is not an individual’. Where‘we’once belonged is an elegiac to the heroine’s past, to
a childhood where‘I’made no sense, except as part of‘we’.
31.9 Why Put in the Effort?
Despite the recruitment efforts of teacher education institutions, the students tend to
come from a relatively narrow sector of society—for precisely the same reasons
which justify our seeking a wider range.
It may be thought that the remarks concerning the‘normal’or mainstream ITE
student will not apply to those from minority groups. This may or may not be not
the case. Minority students who have (whether successfully or not) integrated their
formal education into their own being have been subjected to 15 or 20 years or
more of indoctrination into the beliefs that are problematic for mainstream teachers.
Those who can resist are rare, and precious. The second problem is, that they may
not generalise from their own experiences to those of other groups of people.
Indeed it can become a matter of importance that‘other’groups remain further
down the ladder. The third problem is that they are often having difficulties of their
own, and if they are struggling themselves to survive in an alien environment,
478 N. Devine et al.