Teacher expectations and equity groups: preservice teacher views from Australia, Sweden and England

Teachers today must be able to cater for diversity in their class-rooms, so they can prepare all students to live and work in a globaleconomy. This requires teachers to have equitable expectations forstudents from diverse backgrounds. As part of a larger study onpreservice teacher cultural competence, this paper investigates thedeveloping teacher expectations of preservice teachers regardingstudents from equity groups. Survey respondents came from threeuniversities in Australia, Sweden and England (n = 351). Whileresults across the samples for the overall survey were mostly similar,there were some clear differences. The Teacher Expectations Scalewas the area of least development for all cohorts and received themost comments in the open responses. Preservice teachers weremore aware of teacher expectations’ importance for some groupsof students than others. The authors outline considerations forinitial teacher education (ITE) programmes regarding the develop-ment of preservice teacher knowledge about teacher expectations