A Survey of Teacher Education for Plural Societies (the S.T.E.P.S. Project) has been commissioned and funded by the Education Research and Development Committee of the Australian Department of Education.

In the present state of teacher education in Australia, there are quite apparent uncertainties about aims, guiding presuppositions, and models of society. For instance, in the area of pluralism, agreement has yet to be reached on whether Australia is multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial, or polyethnic. All these terms have been used at various times – often as political rhetoric – but arguably do not clarify our understanding of the nature of Australian pluralism.

At the conceptual mapping level, STEPS is designed to survey available recent Australian and overseas literature and research to arrive at a summary of the concepts currently employed to describe plural societies. It is hoped that this summary will provide a basis for arriving at a definitive statement about the special characteristics of Australian pluralism – it being axiomatic that each plural society will have its own ‘brand’ of pluralism – in order to assist educators’ and educational planners’ thinking and policy making.