Educating Teacher for Global Social Change

• In Event: Professional development for learners in uncertain and changing social/global environments

Proposal

In this paper we present the results of our qualitative study "XXXXX". The study was conducted among trainee teachers in Finland and Germany. The focus was on the implicit knowledge that forms teachers' actions when teaching in the context of diversity. This research contributes to strengthening global education in teacher education by exploring in depth the conditions for orienting teaching towards social justice and equity.

Social dimensions as one of four perspectives within world society (Luhmann, 1997) are relevant to teaching and learning in the globalized world in two ways: First, the world as an abstract world society (ibid.) has emerged as a reference horizon for all. Secondly, human mobility brings people with multiple affiliations physically together in one place and within one community, which can be called superdiversity (Vertovec, 2007). Precisely because both perspectives are associated with a multiplicity of possibilities, uncertainty, increasing complexity and ambiguity, both aspects of the globalized society need to be brought into a perspective of justice, equity and inclusion, especially in education (UNESCO, 2017), in order to pursue the goal of a livable future.
Given the need to prepare young people to navigate societal complexity and participate as active citizens, teachers are called upon to act as change agents (Bourn, 2016), which also has implications for teacher education (Aydarova & Marquart, 2016). Research focuses on specific aspects such as intercultural education (Acquah et al., 2016) or education for sustainable development (Rieckmann, 2019). Other scholars emphasize the challenge of teaching global issues in higher education (Clemens et al., 2019; Lang-Wojtasik, 2014). In addition to these important contributions, we focus on the tacit knowledge of preservice teachers that guides their professional action in a globalized world in relation to the aforementioned dimensions of the social. In this way, we aim to shed more light on the conditions for orienting teacher education towards global learning (Bourn, 2020) as a prerequisite for teaching for social justice, both in the abstract and in the concrete situation.

The development of the research design was based on the realization that the statements of the respondents on the different levels of knowledge do not necessarily have to be coherent. For example, while at the explicit level there is high agreement with positions that value diversity (Vigren et al., 2022), more skeptical expressions can be seen at the level of implicit knowledge that guides action (Taube, 2022; Timm, 2021; Wagener, 2018). In order to better understand the characteristics of professional practice and its development, we opted for a research design in which the implicit knowledge of student teachers in the action context of social complexity was examined in more detail: We collected data with group discussions in which participants were given an impulse to discuss their common experiences, especially seminars on culture and diversity in education. The group discussions were interpreted according to the documentary method (Bohnsack, 2010), which refers to the distinction between explicit-theoretical and implicit-non-theoretical knowledge (Mannheim, 1964). Finally, the interpretations were transformed into a typology of ideal types, which was obtained abductively (Peirce, 1934).

The data show for as a common basis of the typology that all groups were concerned with social change as a core element. On this core theme, we identified four sub-aspects in the data that were used as comparative categories for the reconstruction of the typology, namely self and world relationship, culture, change, learning and teaching. The main findings are as follows:
(1) The typology shows that the conceptualizations of change are the same for the positioning of the self in the world and for the basis of professional action, or that change is the central concept embedded in both areas of expression.
(2) It emerged that only one out of five types is proactively oriented towards shaping change, i.e. can be characterized in a narrow sense as a change agent of a world in transition.
(3) Even though we did not take an explicitly international comparative approach from the beginning, it was particularly interesting that the Finnish or German affiliation of the groups was not reflected in the distribution of orientation types, although there are manifold differences between Finish and German education systems: Each type is composed of discussions in both contexts.

By discussing the findings in the light of the challenges for teacher education in the globalized world (Gaudelli, 2016; Forghani-Arani, 2020; Garmon, 2004), we will provide a perspective in which teacher education should be readjusted. The aim is to equip student teachers to participate responsibly in society as teachers in the broadest sense for the benefit of all.

Author

• Susanne Timm, University of Bamberg