Shifting Perspectives and Pedagogy: Impacts of an International Student Teaching Practicum

• In Event: Teacher Education for the 21st Century: Fostering Growth in Teacher Professionalism and Practice

Abstract

Improving the quality of the next generation teaching force is an issue of significant public policy concern in the United States, and arguably one of the most important levers to improving K-12 education for a 21st century world (White House Office of the Press Secretary, 2014). Demands on 21st century education arise in part from an increasingly globalized economy and inter-dependent world—a world that requires students who understand, problem solve, and think critically and creatively in ways that connect them with broad perspectives and resources (e.g., Dolby & Rahman, 2008). A related though different demand speaks to the need for classroom practice that increases success for all students, in part by meeting the gifts and challenges of an increasingly ethnically and linguistically diverse schooling population (Gay, 2000). This is especially true for California classrooms.

Learning to teach in globally competent and culturally responsive ways is one primary argument for the internationalization of teacher education (Longview Foundation, 2008). In addition, we argue that for the purpose of developing a new teacher’s practice and knowledge about practice, an international experience requires the developing teacher to engage as a teacher (rather than as a student), with supports that both help him/her make sense of the experience in terms of teaching and learning, as well as integrate new perspectives into classroom practice upon return.

Program faculty from a mid-sized university in California, USA, developed a teaching practicum exchange with programs in Denmark, Singapore, and Switzerland. We engaged in a study organized around three primary questions: 1) How did the teacher candidates process their international experience? 2) What changed in terms of their understandings about teaching and learning? and 3) How did they integrate and incorporate their new perspectives upon returning to teach in U.S. classrooms?
Data sources included weekly journals; evaluations from supervisors; pre- and post-practicum responses to the My Cultural Awareness Survey (Marx & Moss, 2011); M.Ed. thesis chapters; and focus group and individual interviews. The work cited here draws primarily on the interviews. We used Attride-Stirling’s (2001) qualitative method of thematic network analysis to extrapolate common themes from the data. Results indicate changes to teacher candidates’ identity as teachers, their knowledge about students, and changes to teaching practice upon return to the U.S.

Author

• Tine F. Sloan, University of California