Where Do We Go From Here? International and Intercultural Teacher Preparation Opportunities Versus Teacher Preparation Reform Recommendations

• In Event: Educational Innovation and Cross-Cultural Teaching and Learning: Seeking Equity Through Policy and Practice

Abstract

Objectives: While global opportunities to pursue student teaching is a well–recognized pathway to ensuring educators’ capacity to internalize the reality of diversity (Garii, 2009), institutional barriers – including regulatory limits and local policy decisions – are working to impede the expansion of such global opportunities (Mahon, 2007; Mahon 2010; Tobin, 2012). Similarly, organizations such as NCTQ (2012) that review teacher preparation practices fail to acknowledge the importance of specific but atypical opportunities embedded in some teacher preparation programs that are known to greatly enhance new teacher capacity. Globalization of the teaching work force is clearly an important goal of teacher preparation to help ensure and support teachers’ capacity to work with an increasingly diverse student population. Yet restrictive aspects of the education reform movement may impede the growth of programmatic options (e.g., international student teaching) that offer new teachers hands–on opportunities to internalize the realities of classroom diversity.
Methods and Data Sources: This presentation is a based on a cross–analysis of recommendations and standards for teacher preparation programs as promulgated by accreditation agencies (e.g., NCATE, 2012; CAEP, 2013) and stand–alone education policy think–tanks (e.g., NCTQ, 2012). These policy standards are addressed in discussions with teacher preparation program leaders with specific focus on how these standards and recommendations have influenced changes in global opportunities for preservice teachers.
Results: Teacher preparation programs across campuses, while suggesting that there are a variety of global opportunities for preservice teachers, are limiting the varieties and time frames associated with field experiences and student teaching possibilities,. This narrowing of global opportunities appears to be associated with concerns that accreditation expectations and state regulations focus on easily measurable.
Scholarly Significance of the Study: It is imperative that educational policy reflects exemplary teacher preparation practices. Allowing the assessment tool to mandate the ways in which teacher preparation is enacted inhibits the development and implementation of opportunities that support teacher excellence in non–traditional ways. Yet reform efforts appear to have limited the implementation of some practices that are known to be effective mechanisms to increase new teachers’ capacities to engage effectively with diverse students. While this result may be an unintended consequence of the broad educational reform efforts, the limitation of global opportunities has a variety of curricular and pedagogical implications. If teachers have fewer opportunities to engage in professional education opportunities in global settings, then not only are they less likely to understand and be sensitive to the needs of their diverse students but teachers are also less likely to be able to articulate and understand US educational practices within the wider frame of educational practices, strengths, and challenges in a global environment. Thus, this work opens up a space for a dialogue to occur that can lead to a more nuanced understanding of educational reform that better assures teacher excellence while simultaneously expanding teacher preparation practices.

Author

• Barbara Garii, SUNY - College at Oswego