Pluralist and intercultural Education; Challenges for Teacher Education.

In our plural societies teachers are faced with special problems caused by or attributed to the fact that our societies are increasingly characterised by the presence of ethnic groups and ethnic minorities. Until now, in initial teacher education relatively little attention has been paid to this development and its educational consequences. The emphasis is laid on in-service training. One of the perennial problems of teacher education is that we often are too preoccu-pied with the student teacher’s immediate concerns, such as how to survive in the classroom, that we are tempted to refer matters that are less important in the student teachers ’ eyes, to in-service courses. This emphasis on immediate concerns in teacher education apparently does not diminish during the further career of the teacher. In in-service training courses, one usually only finds teachers who are directly confronted with the consequences of the presence of ethnic minority pupils in their classes. Yet, pluralist education is —according to its advocates — and essential educational change of the whole educational system. A first section will briefly describe the conceptual framework basic to this contribu