Heterogeneous Teacher Recruitment and Social Studies Didactics: Bringing the Sociology of Education Back In

Abstract

This article contributes to a newer debate in teacher education research regarding the professionalization for the work in multicultural urban classrooms. In a social studies didactics’ perspective teacher-learnermismatch seems to be an important factor influencing the ability to construct meaningful social studies learning environments – and thus represents an important challenge for the education of future teachers in our domain. But what are the social origins of diverse teacher professional identities in the social studies domain? This article refers to a biographicalnarrative study on teacher students from very heterogeneous backgrounds exploring their basic beliefs and attitudes towards becoming a social studies teacher.