Special Issue of Tertium Comparationis 1/2027
Peer-reviewed journal
Guest Editors: Drorit Lengyel, Carola Mantel and Lisa Rosen
Background and Focus
Teachers from ethnic, racialised, linguistic, religious and other minoritised groups may contribute valuable linguistic resources, professional knowledge and community-based perspectives to schools and teacher education. They may also serve as important role models and support more inclusive educational practices.
However, positive narratives of diversity can obscure the unequal conditions under which minority and minoritised teachers work. Their expertise may be reduced to assumed cultural, linguistic or religious “authenticity”, while they are expected to act as mediators, bridge-builders or representatives of particular communities. Such expectations may create opportunities for participation while also reproducing othering, deprofessionalisation and unequal responsibility.
The distinction between *minority* and *minoritised* teachers is therefore important. While “minority” may refer to demographic or social positioning, “minoritised” highlights the institutional, political and discursive processes through which certain teachers are constructed as different, peripheral or as not fully belonging. Minoritisation is understood here as relational, context-dependent and historically situated.
The Special Issue welcomes international and comparative research on minority and minoritised teachers, pre-service teachers and other educational professionals. Contributions may examine professional roles, identities, recognition and belonging across teacher education, professional development, schools, educational supervision and community-based programmes.
We particularly welcome papers connecting individual experiences and professional agency with the organisational, political and discursive conditions in which educational professionals work. Possible topics include:
- the construction and positioning of minoritised teachers within educational systems;
- assigned professional roles and responsibilities, and ways teachers negotiate or resist them;
- institutional conditions shaping recognition, belonging and participation;
- professional, biographical, linguistic and community-based knowledge;
- the effects of minoritisation on teacher education, professional development and career trajectories;
- institutional responsibility for addressing structural inequalities;
- comparative and transnational perspectives on minoritisation, education and social justice.
Contributions do not need to compare countries directly. Authors should, however, situate their cases within wider international debates and discuss what their analyses reveal about the production and negotiation of professional difference, legitimacy, recognition and belonging across contexts.
Submission
Please send the following to the Guest Editors by 9 October 2026:
- provisional title;
- abstract of approximately 250–300 words;
- names and institutional affiliations of all authors;
- confirmation of intention to contribute.
Drorit Lengyel: drorit.lengyel@uni-hamburg.de
Carola Mantel: carola.mantel@phzg.ch
Lisa Rosen: lisa.rosen@rptu.de
Full manuscripts are due 30 November 2026. Manuscripts should not exceed approximately 6,000 words or 40,000 characters, including references. Further formatting and submission guidelines will follow.
All contributions will be published open access, with no article processing charges or other publication fees.