Purpose

Teacher training has always been a major problem in Taiwan’s educational development from the 1990s educational reform movements to the recent various competency innovations in the “108 Curriculum Guidelines,” not to mention the training of multicultural educators. Given the structural limitations of transforming the mainstream education system in Taiwan, this study uses the example of a non-profit organization, “Teach For Taiwan” (TFT), to illustrate the strategies and practices of TFT for promoting educational equity through its teacher training program in responding to educational inequity. This study explores the future imaginary of multicultural teacher training through the dimensions of recruitment criteria and teacher professional development mechanisms in TFT. The primary purpose is to create a reflective space for dialogues between multicultural education and TFT’s connotation and practices to improve educational inequity.

Design/methodology/approach

Scholarly discourses regarding “educational inequity” have been gradually immersed in the area of multicultural education in the past two decades. Against this context, this study uses a qualitative methodology, including in-depth interviews, participatory observation, and documentary analysis, to depict a clearer image of TFT’s teacher training program. We engage in dialogue with theoretical concepts of multicultural education to further explore the challenges faced by TFT, as well as the implications of the TFT experience for future multicultural teacher training in Taiwan.

Findings/results

There are four key findings in this study: (1) TFT emphasizes the soft powers of future teachers, training teachers as leaders in the classroom, and utilizing an interdisciplinary mentor system to scaffold multi-level teacher support systems. In TFT’s practice, the focus on communications, problem awareness, self-awareness, and empathy can offer a reference to the institutional design of future multicultural teacher training programs. (2) TFT tends to conceptualize educational inequity mainly by focusing on the economic dimension of class. Dimensions in multicultural education, such as remote areas, Indigenous ethnicities and cultures, have been limited to the local contexts and the communities they serve. Besides, TFT’s connotation regarding educational inequity pays less attention to gender inequity and sexual minorities. (3) TFT recruits teachers by examining applicants’ competencies and characteristics with the tool of their self-developed standards. However, this strategy might fall into the dilemma of “liberal multiculturalism”, by which the composition of recruited TFT teachers looks “diverse but homogeneous”. (4) Most TFT members conceptualize multicultural education as “pluralist multiculturalism” by recognizing and respecting differences. However, they have paid less attention to challenging the mainstream socio-cultural structures. Notably, learning in a real teaching context helps them to surpass the concept of economic-centered and class-referring “educational inequity”. Additionally, the reflective practices help to expand TFT members' views on multicultural education from more structural perspectives.

Originality/value

Few existing studies have explored alternative teacher training organizations in Taiwan. Given the knowledge gap in the area of multicultural teacher training studies, this study has the indexical significance as the first study to investigate TFT’s teacher training program. Our findings can serve as a reference for other teacher training practitioners to develop multicultural teacher training mechanisms.

Implications

TFT’s teacher professional development mechanisms provide TFT colleagues with teaching consultancies, emotional support, and personal career exploration. The system may serve as a reference for future teacher training practitioners in developing multicultural teacher training programs in Taiwan. Nevertheless, how to respond to educational inequity more comprehensively, rather than referring to certain concepts, is also the direction of multicultural teacher education development in the future.