BackHome
Refresh: OffView Personal Schedule
Session Submission Summary

Globalization and teacher education II: Global imaginaries, norms and practices of teaching

Sun, February 19, 8:00 to 9:30am EST (8:00 to 9:30am EST), Grand Hyatt Washington, Floor: Independence Level (5B), Independence F

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Globalization matters with regard to making sense of contemporary developments in teacher education and training and in the critical assessment of solutions to improve teacher preparation and professional development. The entry point of this panel proposal is that due to the scale and complex nature of challenges confronting societies and their education systems, a global outlook and globaliza-tion theory are essential for the capacity of comparative and international research to adequately framing the role of teachers as specialized agents in contemporary societies and for rethinking the fu-tures of education (International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030, 2021; UNESCO, 2021).
In this way, the panel addresses the CIES 2023 theme “improving education for a more equita-ble world” and the thematic guiding questions. Social justice, sustainability, improvement of learning and teaching, and critical reflection on the field of comparative and international education, are issues entangled with globalizing processes, in the sense of expanding and intensifying social relations across world-space and world-time that are affecting the lives of individuals, systems and societies (James & Steger, 2014).
Given the deep social and cultural significance of teacher education and training in any society, the lacuna of theoretically well-informed work on globalizing forces shaping teacher education is a matter of serious concern (Menter, 2017; Paine, Aydarova, & Syahril, 2017). Forming part of a double panel proposal, this panel particularly focuses on global imaginaries, norms and practices of teaching. The panel papers are thus concerned with cultural beliefs and rationalities (Anderson-Levitt, 2003), guided by what James and Steger (2014, p. 423) denote as imaginaries, that is, “patterned convocations of the social whole” and “ways of imagining how ‘we’ are related to each other in concrete communities or entities of belonging.”
Informed by globalization theory and concepts from anthropology, education and sociology, the four papers are complementary in the way that they address a variety of norms and practices associated with teaching, teacher education and training, and how these are shaped, perhaps pre-reflexively, by the ways people imagine their social existence - expressed, for instance, in conceptions of ‘the global’, ‘the national’, or ‘the moral order of our time’. In terms of geographical focus, the panel has a global outlook.
More specifically, Paper 1 centers on three models of global education in teacher education, informed by Human Capital Theory, Human Capabilities Approach, and Cosmopolitan Ethical Approach, respectively. The paper discusses how the two latter approaches in combination might help to reframe global education in teacher education programs from the current neoliberal emphasis on future-ready competencies.
Paper 2 is concerned with the theorization of “context” – a ubiquitous yet rarely theorized notion in comparative education – in teacher education research. The authors adopt Vygotsky’s theories to explain the dialectic between teacher practices and the globalized socio-cultural-political environment, illustrated with a study of English-as-a-medium-of-instruction in initial teacher education in Vietnam.
Paper 3 discusses how globalizing processes driven by the use of information and communication technology (ICT) reshape the teaching profession, the nature of their work, as well as their ability to access professional development and avenues for leadership.
Paper 4 points out that the imaginary of teacher education research is becoming increasingly globalized, yet that the field takes ‘the global’ for granted in a pre-reflexive manner, including a neglect of globalization theory and lack of reflexivity concerning the normative and ideological implications of the globalizing research imaginary.
The panel provides a theoretical contribution to the CIES 2023 program. Drawing on extensive review of the literature on globalization and education, the panel papers in combination contribute in two distinctive ways to existing scholarship. First, the papers demonstrate that globalization has not had a uniform impact on the norms and practices of teacher education and the teaching profession. Dominant global discourses thus tend to appear more hybrid, ambiguous, and contradictory, in terms of the lived experiences of teachers, their practices and sense of professional identity (Paine & Zeichner, 2012; Seddon, Ozga, & Levin, 2013). Corresponding with Panel I’s argument regarding vernacular globalization (Lingard, 2000), the panel papers in this way corroborate that there remain wide variations globally in the conception and practices of teachers and teaching, including the ways in which teacher educators and teacher candidates engage with teacher knowledges and curriculum. While much of the comparative education literature focuses on math and science (cf. the surveys of TIMSS and TEDS-M), these panel papers provide insights into areas that remain little explored.
Second, with their different foci the panel papers explicate James and Steger’s (2014) astute observation that imaginaries tend to have political and ideological implications, and that they are intimately linked to the subjective experience of the ‘social whole’ and ontological understandings of time, space and being-in-the-world.

Bibliography
Anderson-Levitt, K. (2003). A world culture of schooling? In K. Anderson-Levitt (Ed.), Local meanings, global schooling: Anthropology and world culture theory (pp. 1–26). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 (2021). The Futures of Teaching: Background paper prepared for the Futures of Education Initiative. Paris: UNESCO.
James, P., & Steger, M.B. (2014). A Genealogy of ‘Globalization’: The Career of a Concept. Globalizations, 11(4), 417–434.
Lingard, B. (2000). It is and it isn't: Vernacular globalization, educational policy, and restructuring. In N.C. Burbules and C.A. Torres (Eds.), Globalization and Education: Critical Perspectives (pp. 79-108). London: Routledge.
Menter, I. (2017). Teacher Education Research. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Retrieved from https://oxfordre.com/education/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264093-e-275
Paine, L., Aydarova, E., & Syahril, I. (2017). Globalization and teacher education. In D.J. Clandinin, & J. Husu (Eds.), The Sage handbook of research on teacher education (pp. 1133-1148). SAGE.
Paine, L., & Zeichner, K. (2012). The Local and the Global in Reforming Teaching and Teacher Education. Comparative Education Review, 56(4), 569-583.
Seddon, T., Ozga, J., & Levin, J.S. (2013). Global Transitions and Teacher Professionalism. In T. Seddon & J.S. Levin (Eds.), World Yearbook of Education 2013. Educators, Professionalism and Politics: Global Transitions, National Spaces and Professional Projects (pp. 3-24). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
UNESCO (2021). Reimagining our futures together: a new social contract for education. Paris: UNESCO.

Sub Unit

Chair

Individual Presentations

Discussant