Abstracts - Earli

understand and interact with all the students in their class. The symposium brings together thefindings of four multi methods studies from different points of view allowing a discussion aboutteacher competences in multi-ethnic classrooms. In the first paper Hirst and Brown conceptualisediversity as socially constructed and competences as being constrained and enabled by institutionaland social practices. The data of two cases studies show how middle school teachers’ knowledgeof diversity influenced their pedagogical practices. The second paper by Cesar and Borges is ameta-analysis of the results of two research projects aimed at promoting more inclusive learningsettings in multicultural classes. By analysing teachers practices and accounts, competencies forintercultural education come into sight. The third paper by Den Brok and colleagues addresses theidentification of teachers’communicative competencies in multicultural classes. A series of casestudies in primary, secondary and higher education provided an empirical foundation for theformulation and specification of teacher competencies in multicultural settings. In the fourth paperHajer explores teachers’ competences from a view that integrates language and content learning,by analysing teachers’ activities and ideas about language proficiency, language learning and theirown role. Her data show a close connection between pedagogical relations and the development ofcontent-integrated approaches and a pattern in the development of teachers’ commitment, both inthinking and acting in their classrooms.Making the teacher ‘competent’: Teacher competences and classroom diversityElizabeth Hirst, Griffith University, AustraliaRaymond Brown, Griffith University, AustraliaClassrooms around the world are becoming increasingly diverse as a result of increasing patternsof trans-national mobility and migration. Diversity is often theorised in terms of the differencesand background characteristics that students bring with them into educational settings. Thesecharacteristics are generally considered to be pre-given stable traits and specific culturalcapabilities. In order to be effective, teachers are expected to develop a variety of competences inorder to understand their students and consider these differences in planning lessons and makingcontent available to all. The goal is to fit classroom pedagogy to the needs of different students.This paper addresses two key issues implied in this approach. Firstly, the teacher is oftenconstructed as conduit of pedagogy, and diversity in terms of teachers is largely neglected otherthan the differences in experience, for example between pre-service, beginning and experiencedteachers. When diversity is theorised as emergent and socially constructed in the context ofinstitutional, social and linguistic practices, rather than being a stable background variable,‘difference’ between teachers and between students is seen as contingent on the social andinstitutional practices of schooling. Secondly, and building on this understanding of diversity, howteachers are ‘made different’ by institutional and social practices has an impact on the teachers’performance of specific classroom competences. Competences are considered as being constrainedand enabled by these practices. This issue of teacher difference and teacher competences areexamined in the light of data gathered in two projects, a nine month ethnographic study of amiddle school second language classroom taught by an Indonesian teacher, and a more recentproject where data was generated through interviews with middle school teachers about theirunderstandings of diversity and how this knowledge impacted on their pedagogical practices.– 40 –