This article examines student teachers' discursive constructions of difference, cultural diversity and race as they write and talk about their cultures and identities in relation to teaching and learning in the first year of a Primary Teaching Degree in a regional Australian university. The qualitative case study which informs this paper considered the discursive resources that students bring to teacher education from their past experiences and contact with cultural differences in communities, families and schools. It examined various discourses around cultural diversity that are available to them in the teacher education course and how their discursive practices are mediated and reconstructed in the particular university context. A major goal was to explore how universities in largely homogeneous settings might firstly work with the resources that students bring to teacher education and, secondly, assist students to consider the implications of cultural and linguistic diversity for teaching language and literacy.