Beyond the “Core”: Preparing Art Educators to Meet the Needs of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students

Abstract

AbstractClassrooms in English‐dominant countries are increasingly multilingual spaces, and research has called for teacher preparation to focus more specifically on the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners. Indeed, efforts have been made to better train pre‐ and in‐service teachers of math, social science, English language arts, and sciences to work with CLD learners. However, we argue that concentrating efforts only in the core content areas is too limited an approach. Specifically, we take the stance that this narrow focus ignores issues of CLD students’ access to arts education (e.g., art, music, dance, theatre, etc.) and also diminishes the value and depth of both the content and language of the arts. In this article, we discuss the need for all teachers to be prepared to support CLD students, describe culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy as a framework for developing art teacher competence, and offer suggestions for policy and practice in pre‐ and in‐service art teacher education.