Practicum assessment of culturally and linguistically diverse early childhood pre-service teachers

The practicum is an integral component of teacher education courses, but culturally and linguistically diverse pre-service teachers can face particular struggles in meeting assessment requirements on the practicum in early childhood settings. This paper reports from a small, exploratory study of early childhood practicum handbooks from four Australian universities, interviews with early childhood pre-service teachers whose home language is not English, and interviews with early childhood educators who had supervised pre-service teachers from diverse backgrounds. Analysis of the data suggests that, while the universities aim to produce graduates who are sensitive to the diversity of the children they teach, similar considerations are not evident in the experiences of some diverse pre-service teachers. We illustrate this claim by describing the case of Sue, a Singaporean Chinese student, who struggled to pass a final-year practicum.