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Session Submission Summary

Teacher Education and Comparative and International Education: Exploring the Symbiotic Relationship between Two Scholarly Fields

Mon, February 20, 4:45 to 6:15pm EST (4:45 to 6:15pm EST), Grand Hyatt Washington, Floor: Constitution Level (3B), Wilson

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Interest in teacher education examined from comparative and international perspectives has gradually increased over the past two to three decades, with literature in this domain expanding rapidly in recent years. Hence, a series of high-profile manuscripts have provided extensive descriptive accounts of teacher education systems around the globe. For instance, the two iterations of the multivolume International Handbook of Teacher Education Worldwide (Karras and Wolhuter 2010; 2019) combined, cover virtually every country’s teacher education system, complete with contextual historical and social development, as well as geographic and demographic details about the countries involved. More importantly, these works contextualize the description of national teacher education systems in policy frameworks, curricular structures, degree programs, in-service professional development opportunities, financing of teacher education, access to university-based teacher preparation programs or the challenges facing teacher education in the individual countries presented.
A similar undertaking is that offered by Loughran and Hamilton (2016), whose handbook presents a more restricted, but no less important survey of teacher education in various national contexts, compartmentalized in thematic units ranging from history and structure to pedagogy, reform efforts, policy and curriculum in teacher education. Similarly, in Darling-Hammond and Lieberman’s (2012) shorter examination of teacher education around the world, a number of authors showcase evolving policies and practices in teacher education in a select group of countries. In parallel, the contributors offer contrasting descriptions of teacher education in national contexts on such varied themes as curriculum development, practicum redesign or professional development. More recently, Tatto and Menter (2019) compiled a convincing cross-national study on teacher education policy and practice, in an edited volume drawing on theoretical and empirical evidence underlining the historical evolution, institutional change and knowledge traditions related to the preparation of teachers in twelve countries spanning four continents. Offering insight into alternative teacher preparation approaches, Thomas, Rauschenberger and Crawford-Garrett (2020) have contributed to the growing interest on international perspectives in teacher education with a compelling collection of chapters on the rise and application of Teach For All models in various national settings.
Inevitably, teacher education cannot easily be dissociated from studying the teaching profession in itself. Therefore, bridging the worlds of teacher education and teaching as a profession in comparative and international perspective has been the focus of a number of select publications in recent years. In two editions of their book titled Comparative and International Education: Issues for Teachers, Mundy et al. (2008) and Bickmore et al. (2017) explore aspects of teaching, including cross-cultural pedagogy, assessment, school improvement, gender issues, indigenous ways of knowing or global citizenship examined in cross-national or cross-regional settings. These themes are elegantly framed within the historical, theoretical and philosophical development of comparative and international education. Similarly, Kubow and Fossum (2007) proceed with their international exploration of issues in education by constructing a thorough explanatory framework binding the multitude of theories informing comparative education, then carefully applying it to examine those issues in comparative perspective. In this endeavor, they approach matters ranging from purposes of schooling, educational access, and educational accountability to teacher professionalism and the impact of globalization in education, devoting significant attention to teacher education in different regions of the world. Finally, in his edited volume, Ginsburg (2012) brings together a variety of scholars examining the policies informing professional development and professionalization of teachers, as well as the extensions of these demands into teacher education through both single-country case studies and comparative cross-national studies.
The scholarship briefly showcased above underscores the critical role teaching, in general, and teacher education, in particular, have played in comparative studies of education over time. Moreover, they underline the necessity to reinforce teacher education as one of the pillars of research in comparative and international education (CIE), as new and unpredictable challenges to education driven by multiple human and non-human vectors arise around the world, which require the development of “global consciousness” (Takayama, Kettle, Heimans and Biesta 2021: 143) in teacher education programming. Against this background, this panel seeks to offer novel examinations of teacher education around the globe, rooted in and informing evolving epistemological and methodological conceptions of comparative and international education. In this sense, the thematic diversity in teacher education offers a solid foundation for comparative and international analyses that interrogates the conventional act of comparison and delves into critical questions on the intersection between these (sub)fields of education. The focus of this panel presentation is to interrogate the place of teacher education or preparation, broadly defined, within comparative and international education and the ways in which the former both shapes and is shaped by conceptualizations of the latter, particularly in an era of socio-cultural upheavals, politico-economic transformations, and climate or health crises affecting the human and natural world.

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