Africa Education Review

Teacher Education to Confront Gender, Sexuality, and Diversity across Educational Systems in Smart Cities

In the rapidly changing and emerging world, educational institutions and classrooms are experiencing new conditions in the smart city digital revolution. The emergence of smart cities and the expansion of digitalization in urban areas has brought a new set of issues to the forefront of modern education. Gender, sexuality, and inequality are prevalent as never before in this new era, especially where rural-urban migration and digital gaps have been researched extensively. This is because more extensive research has been centered on collecting and analyzing data about people’s activities primarily to improve public services, increase productivity and efficiency, enhance economic opportunity, and improve quality of life. On the other hand, education is a field where major changes are being made. Recent advances in education involve personalization, differentiation, and individualization of the teaching-learning process. Technology has brought a wide range of opportunities to personalize learning and accommodate diverse learners. Teachers need to identify and meet the needs of diverse learners while maintaining equity among them. Yet, teachers are taught more about the subject they will teach than about how to teach.

There is a need to shift from a traditional teacher preparation model to a holistic pedagogical model that demands diversity in every respect, be it students, technology, or content. Inclusive teachers need competencies across disciplines to transform knowledge into learning by nurturing varied thinking skills in students. This transformative approach will enable teachers of future schools for all students, including those with special educational needs. To meet the needs of a changing educational landscape and protect against future threats to humanity, teacher education programs must reassess curriculum design, instructional practices, and field knowledge to address contemporary demands in education. Teacher education programs that emphasize cultural sensitivity and awareness may help mitigate some concerns related to intolerance or inequity in the classroom. Therefore, it is crucial to strengthen advances in teacher education to address gender, sexuality, and diversity across educational systems in smart cities.

This special issue investigates the role of teacher education in confronting gender, sexuality, and diversity across educational systems in smart cities. This special issue is primarily focused on educating students and people in a better way through adequate teaching pedagogy so as to provide them with appropriate knowledge regarding gender discrimination and make them aware of the problems faced by women in our society. It emphasizes the fact that there are several challenges confronting gender, sexuality, and diversity across educational systems in smart cities. Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

 Topics of interest for this special issue include but are not limited to: 

1. Global competency for inclusive education with teacher education
2. Mitigating students inequality and promoting inclusion with advances in teacher education
3. Effective ways to confront gender, education, and society with teacher education
4. Reimagining the ways of overcoming gender, sexuality, and diversity in education acros smart cities with teacher education
5. Advances in teacher education to deal with technology based learning in smart cities
6. Teacher education for eradicating gender inequality and promoting students inclusion
7. Innovative teacher education policies to confront gender, sexuality, and diversity across educational institution in smart cities
8. Teacher education for emerging modern era and smart cities
9. Innovative curriculum and pedagogical models for teacher education to confront inequalities among students
10. Empowering teaching attitudes, norms and values with teacher education for promoting students inclusion across smart cities.