Women and citizenship in global teacher education: the Global-ITE project

Abstract

The Global-ITE (Initial Teacher Education) scheme is a three-year education project. It aims to enable trainee teachers in three teacher-education institutes in India, Kenya, and England to link local and global social issues to each other, and relate them to the school curriculum; and to promote a global perspective on citizenship education. Integral to our vision of global citizenship is gender equality, together with a respect for diversity. The project leaders in each country are women academics, as is the project adviser, and there is a preponderance of women students involved in the project. This gives women a voice in a vitally important area of international curriculum development. However, there are outstanding questions to be resolved about the limits on women's ability to influence change beyond the project, when men still make many operational and resourcing decisions in world politics.