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The recent world refugee crisis has mobilized societies all around the globe and has led to the multiplication of initiatives calling for support to refugees. Given the fact that one-third of the displaced population were children, measures for their immediate integration into schools were taken in most European countries. Although in Greece children with refugee experience first attended schools in 2017, teachers were not adequately prepared to cope with students who had lacked schooling for many years and with whom they couldn’t easily communicate due to language barriers. New teaching methodologies were needed for pre- and in-service teachers to bridge the gap between existing knowledge and the needs of refugee students. In this context, the authors designed a project called “Literacy through Drama” in the reception class of a public school in Volos, Greece involving 12 pre-service teachers. The findings of the study highlight that drama-based informal learning may provide opportunities for pre-service teachers to develop valuable knowledge about learners in authentic settings and pedagogy in practice. Faculties of education could facilitate effective community partnerships with organizations that work with refugee families and children and the school system and propose holistic curricula which include refugee student experiences. Moreover, pre-service teachers could gain skills and knowledge in supporting refugee students, identify refugee students’ needs, communicate in creative ways, and overcome deficit beliefs about refugee students.

This chapter focusses on the research methodology of the completed project, drawing on what Martin (2008) described as ‘Indigenist’ research traditions or practices. The project drew upon tenets of critical race theory which developed over the life of a university teaching and learning project to support the praxis of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, or Indigenous,1 pre-service teachers on their final internships prior to graduating.

The broader project was conceptualised and framed within our prioritisation of Indigenist standpoint and critical race theory. Our project was designed to amplify the perspectives and voices of Indigenous students in situations where White, hegemonic relations appeared to constrain their potential achievement on practicum in socially unjust and often racist ways. Research into the achievement and success of Indigenous education graduates in Australia is dominated by non-Indigenous reporting, framed in deficit language of Indigenous ‘underachievement’, ‘barriers’, ‘lack’, and ‘disengagement’, rather than from their experience of injustice in their professional preparation as teachers.

The research design troubled how researchers like us ‘come to know’ Indigenous achievement in the higher education sector through the pre-service teachers’ words, impelling us to listen to stories of discrimination, rather than to official accounts of how they ‘failed’ to measure up to teacher standards. The attention to detail in the multi-site, micro-level practices in teacher education and the ways these unfold in situ for Indigenous students would not be possible without the Indigenist research methodology developed in partnership with Indigenous research colleagues and student co-researchers.

This chapter then serves to remind educational researchers that research is a practice and has practice architectures with particular hegemonic arrangements which have not transpired to serve the interests of Indigenous peoples. Honouring Indigenist standpoint and employing critical race theory in research design thus means paying particular and careful attention to the work that research practices do, on, to, and with communities, not normative (colonial) crafting of the praxis research problem.

By adopting the Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4), Cambodia has experienced various precarious progress and challenges in implementing inclusive education due to the rudimentary inclusion concept prevalent in the country. This chapter denotes updates on the progress of policy implementation, progress of inclusive education programmes by sub-sectors, progress of pre-service and in-service teacher training, and challenges of inclusion at school levels. Moreover, it deliberates the perspectives and implications of effective inclusion with a focus on policy support, teacher education reform, availability of data, and monitoring and evaluation paradigm to achieving Agenda 2030 in Cambodia.

With the arrival of various assistive technologies (ATs) such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality and others, we can enhance support in a classroom with special educational needs students. The role of teachers in the new era will be switched to finding ways to develop the full potential of all students, rather than traditionally classified dull tasks, e.g. filling out forms, physical observation of children's behaviour etc. This chapter focuses on elaborating how AT can help to improve the efficiency of special education in the future, and how schools should restructure to accommodate this disruptive change to ease teaching in a classroom with a diverging group of students.

This chapter traces one student teacher's (Joan) experiences of learning to teach English as a second language in a cross-cultural context during a teaching practicum in Hong Kong. The school-based practicum is a core component of many initial teacher education programmes. During this induction period, usually an 8-week block, student teachers are placed in local schools to learn how to integrate theories into practice in real teaching situations. Specifically, I uncover how Joan grappled with the tensions and complexities of teaching young learners from a different cultural and linguistic background, in a small elementary school situated in the borderland between Hong Kong (an autonomous region of China) and Shenzhen (a province of Mainland China).

Critical incidents from Joan's practicum experiences were analysed to uncover how she dealt with the tensions and dilemmas in confronting difference and marginalising practices while learning to teach English as a second language (ESL) in the practicum school. Implications on how to develop initial teacher education programmes so that student teachers learning to teach across cultural contexts can be encouraged to explore, confront and ‘deal with the emotional terrain of understanding difference’ will be discussed (Boler & Zembylas, 2003, p. 123; Zembylas, 2010).

This chapter discusses the current state of inclusive education in Azerbaijan and builds connections to the realization of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). It focuses on Azerbaijan's progress toward SDG4 targets, such as early childhood development, general education, and pedagogical higher education. In this article, the history of inclusive education in Azerbaijan is described, relevant education policies are reviewed, definitions of inclusiveness and inclusive education are provided, compared with international standards, and the main challenges are pointed out. Moreover, the chapter discusses the challenges of the reform process and inclusive education during pandemics and war crises.

In this chapter, we outline the research presented by each of the contributors, who used narrative inquiry approaches that were grounded in long-term research, to examine teacher experiences of cross-cultural teaching. The authors write about cross-cultural experiences that cross temporal, spatial, and social-personal dimensions. Woven into teaching and learning experiences set across time and context were interactions with colleagues, peers, and community members that offered insight into rationale for pedagogical decisions about ways in which practices and curricular materials may be mismatched or well aligned, or unfolded with tension in their current professional contexts. This crossing of time, context, and across social-personal interactions added complexity in ways that highlight the need for research methodologies that support examination of experience that unfolded across time, space, and social-personal dimensions. The authors elaborate upon ways in which a narrative inquiry approached provided a theoretical foundation to highlight complexities and reveal nuances of cross-cultural teacher experiences. The cross-cultural features in these chapters, whereby teachers cross cultural boundaries when they assumed teaching positions in communities culturally different from those in which they themselves were educated and certified. We argue for the need for cross-cultural comparative narrative inquiry approach, that help to reveal complexities of these cross-cultural teaching and learning as a fitting research approach to document and to analyze complexities underlying and informing understanding of teacher knowledge in cross-cultural teaching contexts.