Multiculturalism in Current and Future Mathematics Teacher Education in South Korea

The recent increase of culturally and linguistically diverse student population in South Korea requires a fundamental change in the teacher education and curriculum. This chapter first describes why multiculturalism education became important and necessary in teacher education in SouthKorea thatwas once knownas a monolithic society, and how the teacher education research has evolved with respect to multiculturalism education. We then synthesize research studies conducted to promote pre-service and in-service teachers’ knowledge and skills related to teaching multicultural students and emergent bilingual students.We explore and analyse relevant research studies in teacher education that suggested theoretical models for multicultural education for pre-service or in-service teachers and that investigated teacher beliefs on culturally and linguistically diverse students. In doing so, we first synthesize research studies on general teacher education and then further explore research studies on mathematics teacher education with the lenses of liberal and critical multicultural education. Lastly, we suggest future directions of multicultural education within Korean teacher education.