Confronting Ourselves: The Facilitation of Globalized Professional Development and Implications for Our Own Practices

• In Event: 29.066 - Intercultural Learning Following an International Teaching Experience: Preparing Intercultural Teachers for Social Justice

Abstract

Theoretical Framework: PD opportunities for teacher educators generally focus on practical issues (e.g., moving from classroom teaching to university practice (Murray, 2014); incorporating new pedagogies into university classrooms (Auld, Ridgway & Williams, 2013)). Limited literature explores how globalized PD additionally informs practice. Globalized teacher preparation suggests that international experiences enhance teachers’ capacity to reconsider their classroom personae and ability to work successfully in diverse spaces (Garii, 2009; Malewski, Sharma, & Phillion, 2012; Shiveley & Misco, 2012). These experiences require targeted self-reflection to enable participants to internalize and transform the experiences into professional action (Gun, 2011; Trilokekar & Kukar, 2011). Teacher educators who facilitate PD reap additional benefits by positioning facilitators as members of explicit communities of practice, encouraging collaborative investigation of learning and growth (Feiman-Nemser, 2012; Margolin, 2014). We explore here how our facilitation of globally oriented PD transformed our professional stances.

Program Description, Methods, and Data Sources: Each author facilitated PD catering to international teachers extending their own capacities. Garii worked with in-service international teachers who had no formal teacher preparation. Teachers were affiliated with a single private school located in SW India catering to students preparing for Indian national exams. Mahon worked with highly experienced teachers from 14 different countries who came to the US for 6 weeks of intensive professional development. We focus here on preparation around teacher leadership. Using self-study methodology (LaBoskey, 2004; Loughran, 2007), a “methodology for studying [one’s own] professional practice” (Loughran, 2007, p 15), we utilized multiple methods (e.g., daily notes/reflections, teaching documents, email exchanges with participants, photographs) to document our facilitation of, while participating in, two disparate globalized PD experiences. We created individual commentaries that allowed us to consider ways in which these experiences impacted our professional personae and practices.
Results/Initial Findings: Initial analysis of our individual data suggests that our self-assumed sensitivity to cross-cultural nuances was limited by our (perhaps unacknowledged) “buy in” to the hegemony of US teacher preparation values. Similarly, our “socially-just selves” struggled when confronted with our international colleagues’ differential (perhaps culturally appropriate) articulation of educational expectations, teacher roles, and school practices. Thus, we had to position ourselves to withhold judgment and begin to struggle with such ideas as "the dogmatism of social justice.”

Scholarly Significance: As teacher educators who embrace diversity and “good and just teaching” (Cochran-Smith et al, 2009) as markers of teacher capacity and excellence, this opportunity to self-reflect on our individual roles as facilitators forced us to confront limitations of our professional belief structures. Although we had very different experiences (Garii in India vs. Mahon in the US), our globalized role as PD facilitators led us to similar, yet troubling, self-awarenesses. This suggests that even as professionals sensitive to concerns of diversity and social justice, we must utilize these global leadership opportunities to reconsider the ways in which we ask teacher candidates to confront their own understanding and implementation of socially just practices. Using our role as facilitators to better situate our practices within a globalized representation of social justice is both challenging and necessary.

Authors

• Barbara Garii, SUNY - College at Oswego

• Jennifer A. Mahon, University of Nevada - Reno