Toward Global Horizons: Student Stories from an International Teacher Education Project

Abstract

These authors present an international teacher education project as an approach to the development of global consciousness in student teachers. Following a brief overview of the five year Regina-Yaounde Inter-University Project, the stories of two of the student participants, one from Cameroon, Africa, the other from Canada, are presented. These stories speak to the impact that the student exchange component of the project has had on their professional development. Exposure to field experiences in a country on another continent has had a profound effect on their subsequent involvement in education. The paper concludes with a discussion of the development of global awareness in the two students as a case of what the continental philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer terms the “fusion of horizons”