Hello everyone! I hope you are doing well during the busy start of the new academic year.

I am proud to share my latest publication, co-authored with my colleague and friend, Dr Vander Tavares (first author) from the University of Inland Norway. Our article, titled “Between asset and deficit, a proxy to race and existing in the other: Pre-service teachers’ perspectives on diversity,” has been published in the journal Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development.

In this article, we draw on a thematic analysis of interviews with ten pre-service teachers to examine their perspectives on and experiences with diversity in teacher education in Norway. Our analysis demonstrates that understandings of diversity tend to evoke more surface-level, one-dimensional representations, stressing discrete identity elements and lacking an intersectional perspective. Furthermore, our analysis illustrates instances in which diversity is seen from a deficit perspective or a problem to be managed and neutralised. We conclude the article with a call for more critical engagements with diversity in teacher education. Our guiding research question is:

• What are pre-service teachers’ ideological perspectives on diversity?

Our main objective is to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement in Norwegian teacher education by engaging with pre-service teachers’ experiences from within their teacher education programmes. This insight can shed light on how teacher education approaches diversity in dimensions such as coursework, practice, and the broader teacher education curriculum.

The paper is published open access.

Tavares, V., & Benediktsson, A. I. (2025). Between asset and deficit, a proxy to race and existing in the other: Pre-service teachers’ perspectives on diversity. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Latest articles, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2025.2564322