Student teachers’ perspectives of learning to enact an inclusive pedagogy: insights for working in high poverty school environments

Preparing new teachers to support all learners and to mitigate the impact of poverty is a challenging endeavour, with many student teachers concerned about how to respond to the needs of increasingly diverse groups of learners. While inclusive pedagogy offers a possible solution to the problem, there is still much to be learned about how to prepare and support teachers for inclusion. This study investigates the knowledge and skills student teachers learning to enact an inclusive pedagogy focus on during their initial teacher education. The paper draws on qualitative data from student teachers enrolled on a one-year Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) in Scotland. The findings highlight the importance of student teachers: (i) developing professional knowledge for connecting to the lives and experiences of children and young people and, (ii) developing professional and interpersonal skills for inclusion. Implications for initial teacher education are discussed.