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

Teachers today must be able to cater for diversity in their classrooms, so they can prepare all students to live and work in a global economy. This requires teachers to have equitable expectations for students from diverse backgrounds. As part of a larger study on preservice teacher cultural competence, this paper investigates the developing teacher expectations of preservice teachers regarding students from equity groups. Survey respondents came from three universities in Australia, Sweden and England (n = 351). While results across the samples for the overall survey were mostly similar, there were some clear differences. The Teacher Expectations Scale was the area of least development for all cohorts and received the most comments in the open responses. Preservice teachers were more aware of teacher expectations’ importance for some groups of students than others. The authors outline considerations for initial teacher education (ITE) programmes regarding the development of preservice teacher knowledge about teacher expectations.