'Locally rooted, but globally informed’: Unpacking the ‘glocal’ dynamics in North-South teacher education partnerships in Kenya

• In Event: Empowerment, Decolonization, and Global-Local Perspectives in Education

Proposal

North-South partnerships in teacher education have been operational for several decades with the aim of alleviating global disparities in teaching quality and improving teachers’ access to resources, pedagogy, and professional development across different contexts (Flint, Albers, & Matthews, 2016). Global reform efforts, such as Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, emphasize increasing the number of qualified teachers in the Global South through international cooperation. However, this approach often neglects reciprocal learning, implying that the Global South must "catch up" (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2012) often overlooking local realities in teacher education (Tikly et al., 2022). The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the one-sided perspective, with efforts to bridge the digital divide focusing on technological access supported by the Global North. Yet, challenges persist regarding technology’s cultural and linguistic relevance, teachers' readiness to use it effectively, and the sustainability of maintaining up-to-date technological infrastructures in the Global South (Moyo, 2017).

This study examines current North-South teacher education partnerships in Kenya to understand how power relations, gender dynamics, historical legacies, and political structures shape ideas, theories, infrastructure (e.g., material and technological), and practices within these partnerships (Yarrow & Venkatesan, 2012; Jensen & Winthereik, 2013). The research question guiding this study is: How are current North-South partnerships shaping discourses, ideas and practices of teaching and teacher education in Kenya? In answering this question, the study also aims to to explore the complexities and challenges that arise when diverse stakeholders—such as teacher educators, teachers, and other experts from the Global North and South—interact with their unique cultures, values, and norms on teacher education practices (Tsing, 2005).

In Global south contexts like Kenya, local teacher education curricula and practices are often seen as falling below global ‘quality’ standards, which are based on the practices of teachers in high-income, Western contexts (Harber, 2017; Odhiambo, 2021). Similar to other sub-Saharan African countries, teacher education in Kenya faces challenges, such as a lack of alignment between the content covered in teacher education programs and the needs of actual classrooms (Odhiambo, 2021). To address these issues, Kenya introduced the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) in 2019, shifting from an examination-focused approach to a skills-based approach to teaching with a strong emphasis on acquiring digital skills as part of 21st century learning (Muricho, 2023). The transition to the CBC curriculum has presented significant challenges, prompting Kenyan universities and teacher education institutions to partner with universities and non-profit organizations from the Global North (Cho, 2024).

The empirical data for this study comes from semi-structured interviews with 29 key stakeholders involved in North-South teacher education partnerships in Kenya and the Global North, along with a document analysis of key policies in Kenyan teacher education. Drawing on STS scholar Anna Tsing’s concepts of ‘friction’ and ‘scale-making’ projects, this study aims to go beyond viewing the ‘global’ and the ‘local’ as oppositional binaries. Instead, it focuses on understanding how global endeavors are often contingent on the specificities of local contexts and networks of power, exploring the ‘how’ and ‘what’ that gets enacted in teacher education partnerships through multiple, sociomaterial arrays of transnational, multi-sector, cross-disciplinary practices (Henry, Oliver & Winters, 2019).

This study aims to contribute to the literature on North-South teacher education partnerships with a focus on the Global South, an area still under-researched (Chasi, 2019; Lefebvre, Pradhan, & Thomas, 2022). Additionally, it seeks to offer a theoretical contribution by critically examining the post-colonial context of Kenya, where these partnerships operate, to understand and theorize how the long-standing ‘development’ logic of the Global South needing technological, epistemic, and material aid from the Global North intersects with the counter-logic of priding and embracing Indigenous, local, decolonial Global South knowledge(s). The findings from this study could be relevant to practitioners, policymakers, teacher educators, and teachers involved in such partnerships in Kenya and other Global South contexts. Furthermore, this research hopes to add to current dialogues on issues related to power, equity, and decoloniality in the context of SDG4 and international partnerships in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Keywords: North-South partnerships, glocal, teacher education, Kenya

References:

Chasi, S. (2019). North-South partnerships in public higher education: A selected South African case study (Doctoral dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, School of Education).
Cho, J. A. (2024). Transformative learning through collaboration: experiences of education beyond borders’ members from Canada and Kenya (Doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia).
Flint, A. S., Albers, P., & Matthews, M. (2018). Interrupting situated practices: critical incidents in international partnerships. Teacher development, 22(2), 281-302.
Harber, C. (2017). Schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa: policy, practice and patterns. Springer.
Henry, J. V., Oliver, M., & Winters, N. (2019). Global-local divides and ontological politics: feminist STS perspectives on mobile learning for community health workers in Kenya. Learning, Media and Technology, 44(3), 235-251.
Jensen, C. B., & Winthereik, B. R. (2013). Monitoring movements in development aid: recursive partnerships and infrastructures. MIT Press.
Moyo, L. (2017). Rethinking the information society: A decolonial and border gnosis of the digital divide in Africa and the Global South. In Theorizing digital divides (pp. 133-145). Routledge.
Muricho, P. W. (2023). Analysis of Education Reforms and Challenges in Kenya: A Historical Perspective. International Journal of Current Innovations in Advanced Research, 36-41.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2012). Coloniality of power in development studies and the impact of global imperial designs on Africa. Australasian Review of African Studies, The, 33(2), 48-73.
Odhiambo, O. D. (2021). Teacher education in Kenya; Successes, Challenges, Policy recommendation and way forward in the 21st century. Institute for Educational Development, 1-12.
Tikly, L., Barrett, A., Batra, P., Bernal, A., Cameron, L., Coles, A., ... & Weldemariam, N. (2022). Decolonising Teacher Professionalism: Foregrounding the Perspectives of Teachers in the Global South. OSF Preprints. October, 12.
Tsing, A. (2005). Friction. An ethnography of global connection.
Yarrow, T., & Venkatesan, S. (2012). Anthropology and development: critical framings. Berghahn Journals.

Author

• Sharanya Menon, Deakin University