Ambiguities and tensions in the construction of ‘global’ graduates

ABSTRACT

Increasingly, competing discourses shape tensions between the role of the contemporary university and the global markets in which universities must exist. This paper draws on the examination of interviews with nine education academics in Australia to illuminate the construction of ‘global’ in the production of the global graduate (GG). Discourse analysis is used to explore how, against the backdrop of COVID 19, participants construct different identities variously related to current and future orientations for the GG. This paper uses two big ‘D’ discourses – efficiency as centralised imperative and boundless productivity – to explore knowledge production and accountabilities, neoliberalism, internationalisation and the construction of marketised universities operating in global knowledge economies. We conclude, the GG is an elusive notion, which draws mobile and multiple positionings to reveal unsettled and often ambiguous constructions of ‘university’ and ‘teacher’, with related tensions for the role and identity of education academics.

KEYWORDS:

• Global graduate
• critical times
• discourse analysis
• knowledge production

Introduction

Practical manifestations of neoliberalism, managerialism and marketisation pervade all aspects of higher education (HE) and have done so for decades (Shepherd, 2018). The COVID 19 pandemic context has highlighted the vulnerabilities of Australian universities in global HE markets disrupted by a sudden reduction in student mobility. Such vulnerabilities are associated with a corporate approach to HE that shifts ‘inputs and processes to outputs and outcomes’, a neoliberal focus on ‘value for money and doing more for less’ (Shepherd, 2018, p. 1669), and careless ‘governance of the role of universities in democratic societies’ (Blackmore, 2020, p. 1332). Furthermore, conflation of the value and production of knowledge with ‘epistemic governance through external pressures of market competition’ (Blackmore, 2021, p. 1) creates tensions between contemporary universities’ roles and the global markets in which such universities must exist. Some argue, for example Blackmore (2020, p. 6), that in Australia, HE has been transformed into a ‘cash cow’ due to the strong influence of neoliberal policies and economic principles that characterise such market orientation. At the centre of ‘education in crisis’ (Giroux, 2020) are the education academics who have a role in fostering global competencies, both in the preservice teachers they educate and the next generation of school students taught by graduate teachers.

Our study, ‘Producing the Global Graduate in Critical Times’, explored how 13 education academics, from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), made sense of ‘global’ in the production of the global graduate (GG), and the identities and experiences they constructed in the process. In this paper, we focus on the Australian interviews due to the specificity of the findings in relation to these. For example, the impacts of neoliberalism and internationalisation in Australia and the impact of the pandemic are distinct from the experience of education academics from Aotearoa NZ. We begin by examining relevant literature around managerialism and the marketisation of HE located within a global knowledge economy. Next, we provide specific details of the study, including the mobile and multiple positions of the participants, before outlining the methods of study. We explain and use two big ‘D’ discourses – the discourse of efficiency as centralised imperative and the discourse of boundless productivity – to frame the discussion of findings. These discourses illuminate the construction of ‘global’ in the production of the GG as being ambiguous and increasingly elusive.

Managerialism and marketisation are complex and overlapping influences in HE, with relevant literature describing an increasing pressure on university managers and market-oriented governments to negotiate fee-based funding for universities, corporate restructure and the commodification of research (Connell, 2019, p. 135). The ‘managerial oppressiveness’ of the neoliberal agenda for the global university has produced tensions due to changes to university curricula that seemingly few staff or students want (Connell, 2019, p. 73, 135). Furthermore, ‘managerialism’ is a key influence in the marketisation of HE which, in recent times, has shaped an academic identity that is willing to be ‘organised and reorganised’ (Bunn et al., 2019, p. 1411; Shear & Wright, 2015).

While the pervasiveness of HE marketisation cannot be solely attributed to the pandemic, we argue that the COVID 19 context has exposed the significance and relevance of marketisation to construction of the ‘global’ through key influences of neoliberalism, the global knowledge economy and the internationalisation of HE. In the construction of ‘global’, managerialism and marketisation are implicated in the elusiveness of the GG, which is the focus of our discourse analysis (DA), explored below.

Key influences in the construction of ‘global’ in HE

Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is an umbrella concept, driving the international enterprise of the ‘global’ university as a purveyor of education to both domestic and international students, through a powerful discourse that constructs international HE as a cosmopolitan and diverse demographic that ‘fosters academic excellence’ (Grimwood, 2018, p. 113). Furthermore, neoliberalism influences and reshapes the HE system through a type of socialised marketing exhibited through language and images on university websites. Such marketing, Lewin-Jones (2019) argues, involves a system of complex ‘neoliberal assumptions about hierarchical, competitive university systems, individual students as customers, and education focused on resources’ (p. 224). The expansion of educational participation is intertwined with the development of neoliberal policies and a systemic architecture of HE that has been drawn into deep imperatives of market, industry and labour (Jayasuriya, 2021; Shahjahan, 2018, 2020). Recent scholarship has also implicated neoliberalism in the colonisation of time and the effect this will have on academic work (Brooks et al., 2021). The impact of neoliberalism on notions of global citizenship has also been questioned. However, as Grimwood (2018) argues, ‘marketised international education is ultimately disengaged from notions of the global public good and therefore from an ‘authentic’ sense of global citizenship’ (p. 113).

The global knowledge economy

Changes to HE policy and the policy aspiration to include more students from diverse backgrounds come as the hegemonic discourse of global knowledge economies increasingly frame HE temporalities’ illuminating the ‘neo-liberalised projection of the university. (Bunn et al., 2019, p. 1411, 1409)

For example, from a student-consumer perspective, the university is projected as a flexible study any time space where knowledge is framed via delivery of ‘chunks of “manageable” tasks (rather than deeper pedagogical processes)’ (Bunn et al., 2019, p. 1418). Neoliberal policies typically understand universities as key drivers for developing infrastructures for the global knowledge economy (Brooks et al., 2021, p. 1). However, against the backdrop of COVID 19, the perception that HE provides the GG global mobility and employability in a competitive global employment market is contentious.

The production of knowledge and knowledge accountabilities

Prior to the pandemic, the market for university graduates in Australia was already in flux, as shown in a progression of updated studies (see Corliss et al., 2020; Daly & Lewis, 2010; Daly et al., 2015). Monetary returns on degrees have increasingly framed what counts for knowledge, including its production and accountabilities in universities and, as Williams (2013) has argued, squeezed out the ‘liberal’ purpose of HE resulting in the increasing use of HE for ‘non-educational ends’ such as, for ‘social inclusion’ or serving the labour market (Brooks et al., 2021; Williams, 2013, p. 48).

Enter the pandemic, and the flux associated with the production of knowledge and knowledge accountabilities is exacerbated. In Australia, this is underpinned by relentless earlier expanding participation in the HE system, with the context of ‘contained public funding’ being ‘politically managed through regulatory regimes that link the public university with the neoliberal capitalist economy’ (Jayasuriya, 2021, p. 584). Brooks’ study in the UK concurs, citing perceptions of neoliberal impacts by students, and a consensus to ‘finish a degree as soon as possible to enter the labour market as soon as possible’ so that the university is no longer about ‘assimilating a wide range of knowledge … it’s just important to get through as fast as possible’ (Brooks et al., 2021, p. 1001). Consequently, the employability of graduates, which was already linked to ‘job-ready’ skills, prior to the pandemic, is being given even greater priority as the knowledge that counts in public materials and marketisation. This, Jayasuriya (2021) says, impinges on how we value the ‘broad disciplinary knowledge’ traditionally associated with the role of a ‘university’.

Internationalisation of HE

Prior to the pandemic, as Lewin-Jones (2019) pointed out, there was ‘considerable debate about what internationalisation consists of in practice and what it should be, particularly in view of the impact of globalisation and marketisation on Higher Education’ (p. 208). Regardless of a before and after view of the current pandemic context, internationalisation remains one of the most significant developments in HE in recent decades (Law, 2016). In Australia, during the pandemic there has been an increasing shift away from the strong sense of the imaginary of the comprehensive university with a clear sense of obligation to the public, to the enterprising and entrepreneurial university, managing to survive in a global education market where education has been treated as a private good (Blackmore, 2020, p. 1332; Connell, 2019). Earlier studies forecast the impact of internationalisation, globalisation, marketisation and employability, differences due to local conditions and localised dimensions of educational policy (Deem, 2001; Deem & Brehony, 2005) enacted within ‘localities and institutions’ (Ball, 2013, p. 8). In our findings we explore how Australian education academics see their role in the production of the GG, including tensions between ‘local’ and ‘global’ factors, related to both urban and regional contexts in Australia, which shape their understandings.

About the study

In a context where the physical closure of the world affected all dimensions of education, our study aimed to find out how education academics in universities across Australia and Aotearoa NZ construct the ‘global’ and how they experienced their roles in producing the GG during times of precarity, swift change and a disposition of critical times.

This paper arises from a research project, Critical times: Producing the global graduate in a pandemic, conducted by the authors together with Rosalyn Black, Matthew Thomas, Margaret Bearman, Bronwyn E. Wood and Lucas Walsh and in collaboration with Nadia Infantes. The ‘Critical times’ project was granted ethics approval by Deakin University, Faculty of Arts and Education: Application HAE-20-181, June 2021. The study began with an initial desktop audit of Australian and Aotearoa NZ university websites to explore how imaginaries of the GG are promoted and realised within pervasive notions of the global knowledge economy and neoliberal policies affecting what knowledge counts for the future. After the initial desktop audit was conducted, participants were recruited via an email invitation. The study comprised interviews with 13 academics who were, at the time, employed in faculties which provide initial teacher education (ITE) programmes: nine in Australia and four in Aotearoa NZ. Interviews were conducted by web conferencing and ran for one hour per participant. A link to a short video, created by a member of the research team using ‘digital collage’ to prefigure constructions of the GG as a stimulus tool, was sent to each participant for viewing prior to the interview. Interviews were recorded and transcribed with participants’ consent before being de-identified. Participants either chose their own pseudonym or were assigned a pseudonym, depending on their individual preference.

Positionality

The authors are active participants in the field of inquiry, as well as the findings and discussion presented below. Author 1 is a teacher educator with a strong background in humanities and history education who has researched intercultural education and teacher practice in schools. As Senior Research Fellow on the project, author 2 undertook the initial thematic analysis (TA) and DA. She has previously used DA to research academic and professional identities and currently works as a teacher educator with a focus on ethical practice.

Method

The initial desktop audit of university web sites searched for universities that identified ‘global’ or ‘GG’ in their marketing. From this review, we deduced that the GG had an indeterminate meaning for universities and academics during COVID 19 and, for that matter, beyond the pandemic.

Participants

Participants were identified from their respective university websites and their roles as academics in teacher education. Nine invitations covering seven Australian universities were accepted by participants and four from universities in Aotearoa NZ. A brief overview of the Australian participants is provided in Table 1.

Table 1. Australian participants.

Overview of Australian participant pseudonym (assigned or self-assigned)	University affiliation	Role at time of interview
Jeff (self-assigned)	Group of Eight	Subject coordinator in education degree
Colin (assigned)	Urban University Australian Technology Network	Coordinator of postgraduate education degree and Bachelor of Education (primary)
Gidget (self-assigned)	Unaligned regional university (same as Bella)	Associate Professor, education (primary) Campus convenor of education programme Coordinates Civics and Citizenship unit and field trip
Wilson (self-assigned)	Regional Innovative Research University	Coordinator of sociology of education subjects
Fred (self-assigned)	Urban University Australian Technology Network	Coordinator of postgraduate HE degree
Bella (self-assigned)	Unaligned Regional University	Teacher educator
Tiffany (assigned)	Regional Innovative Research University (same as Fred)	Teacher educator
Carl (assigned)	Group of Eight	Honorary professor and consultant
Janis (assigned)	Group of Eight	Note: Transcript inaudible – not used in the data

Analytical framework

In this paper, we have adapted Gee’s (2014) approach to DA as a suitable analytical framework to build on the initial TA, which followed Braun and Clarke (2021). DA is a flexible theory and method for analysing the construction of language to scrutinise how participants position themselves within social recognisable identities, engaging in socially recognisable activities (Gee, 2010). Through multiple readings of the transcripts using specific ‘building tasks’ and ‘inquiry tools’ characteristic of Gee’s methods (2010, 2014), the DA illuminated the construction of different identities used by participants to explain ‘global’ and how they experienced their roles in the production of the GG. Following Gee (2014, pp. 24–25), we used an expansive ‘big D’ conceptualisation of discourse as ‘interactive, identity-based communication’ that uses ‘both language and everything else at human disposal’ to show beliefs and values and negotiate a socially meaningful identity. Big ‘D’ discourse goes beyond language in use, or ‘little D discourse’ (Gee, 2010, 2014). As Gee (2014) explains, when we interact with others, ‘so too do two (or more) Discourses’ (p. 24). Consequently, big ‘D’ discourse is a useful analytic tool for understanding identity construction as a socially negotiated process. Below we present two big ‘D’ discourses – efficiency as centralised imperative and boundless productivity – to illuminate the figured worlds of ‘university’ and ‘teacher’ evoked in the responses of the education academics in this study. The term ‘figured world’ refers to a typified or ‘taken for granted’ image of how the ‘university’ works or the ‘normal’ teacher (Gee, 2014). We propose that the two discourses and related positionings that we identified are characteristic of saying, being, and doing production of the GG in contemporary universities (Gee, 2014).

Analytic process

Our analysis involved four overlapping phases. Initially we used NVIVO version 12 to manage the generation of topics and broad themes, following the reflexive TA process of becoming familiar with the data, labelling (coding) data and generating initial themes (Braun & Clarke, 2019, 2021). In reflexive TA, meaning making is an active and situated process in which researcher subjectivity is considered a ‘resource for knowledge production’ (Braun & Clarke, 2021, p. 343). Consequently, throughout the phases of analysis, we kept our positionality in focus. Reflexive TA is flexible and can be used inductively and deductively, aiming to produce multi-dimensional themes (Braun & Clarke, 2021). We initially produced themes deductively, based on an initial literature review on time and temporalities in HE by a member of the research team – Dr Rosalyn Black. Such themes included space, time, academic roles, academic identities, GG as economic actor and GG as moral and civic actor. During this phase we also inductively identified two additional themes: ‘teacher education’ (accountabilities, futures orientation and teaching modalities) and ‘knowledges and knowledge production’. We then explored relationships between themes to delineate them (Braun & Clarke, 2019, 2021). This involved iteratively reviewing coding of data extracts and revising this based on logic and coherence, and the streamlining of overlapping codes where possible. We also re-coded data to differentiate codes; for example, we kept academic roles and academic identities as separate themes, although there were clear relationships between these and other themes such as ‘time’. We also began ‘big D’ DA to explore how key themes were enacted in social identity construction. Our guiding questions were:

1. What kinds of identities are being enacted? What kind of identity is the speaker seeking recognition for?

2. How are ways of acting, interacting, believing and valuing tools and technologies being used to enact a socially recognisable identity and engage in a socially recognisable activity in the global HE context? (adapted from Gee, 2010, p. 181).

3. What kinds of knowledges ‘count’? How are they related to discourses and identities?

During the third phase of analysis, we aligned DA with our analysis of themes and mapped both analyses to the literature review using a Miro board. This use of the visual process highlighted connections between our analysis and themes reflected in the literature, such as the drive to standardise and marketise education to meet the needs of the global labour market, and the ways that the ‘knowledge economy’ influences what knowledge is produced and how it is valued. The final phase of analysis involved writing up a narrative account of TA and DA to explicate the discourses of efficiency as centralised imperative and boundless productivity presented in our findings below. We cross-checked full transcripts to ensure context had not been lost during the analytic process and exposition of those discourses.

Findings and discussion: discourses of efficiency as centralised imperative and boundless productivity

We found that discourses of efficiency as centralised imperative and boundless productivity were implicated in ambiguous constructions of ‘global’ and different positionings in relation to the production of the GG. These discourses are part of a changing role for universities and temporalities related to the knowledges, dispositions and capabilities that are seen as valuable in constructing the future that shapes the contemporary university and its graduates.

Discourse of efficiency as centralised imperative

Reflecting a focus on academic roles and identities, the Discourse of efficiency as centralised imperative was apparent in participants’ references to impacts of managerialism on academic work. As one participant, Colin, put it, ‘pushing [the] agenda [of managerialism] is the need for integrative academics to be all things to all people’. Other reported examples of Efficiency as centralised imperative included institutionally driven cuts to global experiences such as programmes being ‘paused’ (Tiffany) and adaptations to delivery (Gidget). The Discourse of efficiency as centralised imperative was also evident in concerns that some participants expressed about the de-professionalisation of teaching, which they associated with centralised teacher professional requirements of education departments and influential global agencies. Among these concerns, the construction of knowledge as and through technology was prominent; for example, through the rise of micro credentials as a new means to achieve employability via ‘miniaturised units of learning’ (Carl). Reflecting the reach of this discourse of efficiency as centralised imperative into construction of the GG at a disciplinary level, one participant, Colin, invoked central policy in referring to the university graduate attributes as the frame for producing the GG in his context: ‘My thoughts on this are informed, probably, by the [university] graduate attributes, which is something that applies across the whole university. And then each faculty, so Faculty, for me, have developed their own version’.

Discourse of boundless productivity

As noted in our earlier overview of the literature, managerialism and marketisation are overlapping phenomena in HE. Consequently, the concerns that participants expressed about loss of academic autonomy and de-professionalisation of teaching were also associated with a marketised discourse of boundless productivity. As one participant (Carl) eloquently commented, ‘the marketisation of the university means that they [universities] cannot actually keep their boundaries stable and fixed. Market thinking itself requires you to push your boundaries’. As explored below, unstable boundaries and tensions between ‘global’ and ‘local’ appear to be significant in participants’ positionings in relation to the two dominant discourses that we identified.

Manifestations of these tensions included ambiguity around the parochial nature of Australian curriculum in a neoliberal system of education and, in a critical time of global flux, the construction of the GG at both micro and macro levels of teaching. Some indeterminacy was also evident in participants’ various positionings around production of the GG. Some evoked a figured world of ‘university’ as producer of active and ethical global citizens in an interconnected world, while others invoked a competing, marketised figure of ‘university’ as generator of productivity and international competitiveness in a global knowledge economy.

Construction of ‘global’ knowledges and knowledge production

Some of the ambiguity in participants’ construction of ‘global’ was associated with tensions between competing knowledge accountabilities and practice, particularly in ITE. For example, Bella reflected:

[W]hat is valued knowledge? … We have our discipline knowledge and then we have our pedagogical knowledge and then we’re trying to kind of create twenty-first century citizens, twenty-first century graduates, what does that mean? It’s about them being adaptive, it’s about them being critical, creative thinkers, it’s about that ability to understand and act on their values on issues that are significant. I think that's what we're trying to do in our program all the time – get them to be acting, rather than just thinking about things.

Here Bella – teacher educator in regional Australia – constructed the ‘global teacher’ as acting a local context, emphasising what knowledge counts in critical times in HE, by focusing on the importance of applied knowledge, and linking this to twenty-first century skills, identified in the Australian curriculum as ‘general capabilities’ (Bearman et al., 2020). The discourse of efficiency as centralised imperative is evident in this construction through invocation of standardised general capabilities, as is the epistemic governance identified by Blackmore (2020) as a product of marketised HE, operating within a global knowledge economy. Also evident is the localised aspect of enacted educational policy that was noted earlier as an impact of the internationalisation of HE (Ball, 2013).

Some participants appeared to resist the potentially oppressive effects of neoliberalism on curricula noted by Connell (2019). For example, Jeff only loosely connected teacher professionalism and curriculum, describing curriculum as ‘a little bit of a map or pathway into the profession’. The argument, noted by Grimwood (2018), that marketised international education is disengaged from an authentic sense of global citizenship, was evident in Carl’s questioning of universities’ limited rhetoric of ‘global citizenship’ tied to global competencies which, he suggested, does not produce graduates who are globally minded or globally oriented. Colin, an academic in an urban university, also connected graduates’ intercultural competence with a broader knowledge horizon, commenting on the importance, in Australia, of learning about indigenous knowledge systems. In an interesting perspective on the relationship between ‘global’ and ‘local’, Carl affiliated with one of Australia’s leading universities (Group of Eight) commented that ‘parochial interests are always damaging to the communities themselves that are being parochial’ before arguing that a construction of ‘teacher’ as a technician has become the focus of global agencies and education departments. This ‘global’ construction of ‘teacher’ decontextualises knowledge accountabilities and is linked to the discourse of efficiency as a centralised imperative associated with centralised exercise of power and loss of academic autonomy. It also appears to reflect the construction of universities as key drivers of productivity in a global knowledge economy (Brooks et al., 2021).

In participants’ different constructions of ‘global’, there appeared to be a tension between accountability to a narrower context of Australian curriculum and teaching standards and broader conceptions of teaching contexts and knowledge systems. This connects with the increased prioritisation of employability as the primary purpose of the university rather than disciplinary knowledge (Jayasuriya, 2021). A similar tension was also apparent in relation to ITE accountabilities, as summarised by Tiffany:

You can say it’s a global degree, but it’s accredited nationally and then, you know, state-based organizations, it has to meet stakeholder and employer demands, which are at a more of a regional level.

Production of the GG

Ambiguities in the relationship between global and local were also evident in participants’ accounts of production of the GG. Regional teacher educators, Tiffany, Gidget and Bella, variously used local contexts to frame ‘global’ in constructing the GG. For example, Tiffany stated an aspiration for her university’s graduates that:

they then have an orientation to the power of education to transform students’ understandings, develop the empathy in terms of those dispositions towards understanding one another, understanding themselves a little bit more, and tackling challenges at a local or global level – global challenges in a local context.

Similarly, Gidget also focused on the importance of local perspectives, commenting that:

We’re kind of really pushing, getting our students to think about looking at a local community … What needs are in that community? How could you develop a school project for a particular school about that issue? … How can you bring in your community assets? … And then how do you then put the global kind of lens on that? So the global is the umbrella term over it – thinking, you know, how does this local issue linked to that Sustainable Development Goal and how can you then take that issue into a kind of more global way?

Other participants constructed ‘global’ to suit their ‘local’ context. A prominent example related to the cultivation of intercultural competence among graduate teachers. In a regional university context, this translated into provision of an elective global experience designed to build intercultural competence that could be brought back into local settings. For example, Tiffany talked about intercultural competence as an important skill for regional graduate teachers’ classroom readiness, expressing the aspiration that graduates would

develop the empathy in terms of those dispositions towards understanding one another, understanding themselves a little bit more, and tackling challenges at a local or global level – global challenges in a local context.

Whereas another regional teacher educator, Wilson, explicitly resisted the notion of being a ‘workplace trainer’ for the state government in favour of [equipping] ‘our preservice teachers to teach in a context, at least for a little while, other than Australia’. These different perspectives reflect localised implementation of educational policy (Ball, 2013).

Reflecting on the relationship between an aspiration to produce graduates who are active and ethical global citizens in an interconnected world, Colin noted a gap between rhetoric and practice:

Universities talk a good game about that kind of stuff but when it comes to actually doing it, it's much, much harder … And let’s face it, universities are increasingly constrained in what they can and can’t do. But I don’t think it’s enough to just stuff young people’s heads full of what it might mean to be an active citizen. It’s got to be something that they do, and they’ve got to do it while they’re at university.

This perceived gap points to a disconnection between Colin’s figured world of ‘university’ as a producer of active and ethical citizens and the prevalent figured world of ‘university’ as a generator of productivity and national competitiveness in a global knowledge economy. This reflects an impact of the internationalisation of HE whereby an imaginary of university as a public good is losing ground to a dominant imaginary of an entrepreneurial and enterprising university competing to survive in a global HE market (Blackmore, 2020; Connell, 2019).

Another participant, Jeff, explored the anxieties and tensions for the GG as a competitive economic actor, evoking a discourse of boundless productivity to construct the GG at his prestigious university as being a ‘neoliberal entrepreneur of the self’. He elaborated by describing students’ focus on differentiating themselves advantageously by gaining high marks and accumulating experiences geared to ‘pimping out the CV’. Here the entrepreneurial and enterprising university operates in a competitive global knowledge economy where employability is prioritised above traditional disciplinary knowledge (Jayasuriya, 2021).

Some participants evoked more than one figured world of ‘university’ to construct the GG. For example, in her account of a ‘global teacher’, Gidget described the development of a former student during a study tour to China. She recounted how the student began the tour showing resistance to experiencing Chinese culture, later trying local food and ultimately gaining a broader appreciation and enthusiasm for Chinese culture after connecting with a student:

We came home with this transformed person who was telling everybody about his trip to China. I think, you know, I have much more faith in the fact that that student is out teaching now would be a global teacher, you know, be able to do global teaching, as a result of having done his undergrad teaching qualification.

In Gidget’s account, the ‘global’ aspect of the GG appears as an economic and a cultural asset that not only contributes to employability and mobility but also to the production of an active and ethical global citizen. Similarly, Tiffany also associated ‘global’ mobility, employability and moral purpose by evoking a figured world of ‘teacher’ as an ethical and service-oriented professional:

They’ve got the individual qualifications to be a global job-ready graduate, but my ambitions for them, I guess, are more the values and dispositions towards social justice agendas, tolerance and understanding and tackling global challenges.

Tiffany also made a moral claim on employability, rejecting the teacher-technician identity associated, by participants such as Carl, with the discourse of boundless productivity:

And I guess things that go beyond work readiness: so very much about community readiness and community engagement and understandings of the context in which they teach and not just the classroom technical skills. And so those contexts, whether they’re local, whether they’re regional, whether they’re understanding the cultural diversity in these regional communities or overseas – is it going to be harder to find the space for those kinds of experiences? Yeah, anyway, some of my reflections. I definitely feel like it’s, yes, a pivotal point in transforming what we do.

Ambiguity and tension

Ambiguity is prominent in these accounts, with different positionings and accountabilities apparent in relation to production of the GG. Underpinning these different positionings are figured worlds of ‘university’ as both generator of productivity and national competitiveness in a global knowledge economy and producer of active and ethical global citizens. These figured worlds are sometimes in tension with the figured world of ‘teacher’ as an ethical, autonomous and service-oriented professional that participants consistently evoked. Taken together, participants’ accounts evoke discourses of efficiency as centralised imperative and boundless productivity to construct mobile academic identities that reflect impacts of internationalisation, whereby the university must be entrepreneurial, enterprising and globally competitive (Blackmore, 2021; Connell, 2019). In addition, instrumental in driving productivity in a global knowledge economy (Brooks et al., 2021). While scholars such as Grimwood (2018) argue that neoliberal influence on universities is at odds with global citizenship conceived as associated with universities as a public good, some participants were able to construct GGs as being both advantaged for employability by attendance at an entrepreneurial enterprising university and prepared to be active global citizens.

Conclusion

This paper has explored ambiguities and tensions related to ways that education academics make sense of ‘global’ and construct the production of the GG. These academics can be seen as being at the heart of ‘education in crisis’ (Giroux, 2020) because of their roles in fostering global competencies in preservice teachers and in the next generation taught by those teachers.

Our findings connect with the literature by showing the pervasiveness of managerialism and marketisation of HE in universities operating within a global knowledge economy. We traced the influence of managerialism in the discourse of efficiency as centralised imperative to illuminate changes to academic roles and identities related to standardisation of curriculum, attributed global competencies and the prioritisation of employability as an impingement on the value of disciplinary knowledge (Jayasuriya, 2021). We identified related ambiguous constructions of ‘global’ in participants’ accounts of tensions between competing knowledges and accountabilities in ITE. For example, disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge appeared as significant in what makes education academics and more specifically, teacher educators accountable at the local level. However, these are directly tied to global competencies such as intercultural understanding. We found that participants evoked competing figured worlds of university as a producer of active global citizens in an interconnected world and university as a generator of productivity in a global knowledge economy. Through the discourse of boundless productivity, we identified how marketisation of HE, within a global knowledge economy, is related to ambiguity in participants’ accounts of the production of the GG. The GG variously appeared as an advantaged, job-ready global citizen and as a ‘global’ teacher bringing intercultural competence back to the ‘local’ context. Again, competing figured worlds – university as generator of productivity in a global knowledge economy and teacher as ethical and service-oriented professional – were evident.

Producing the GG during a pandemic has become increasingly elusive for education academics as they have tried to translate what Carl called a ‘corporate rhetoric’ of global citizenship and competencies into local needs. This is evident in the varying ways that participants positioned their accountability to disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge and to fostering global competencies. In a context of reduced global mobility, education academics have had to negotiate accountability for production of the GG to multiple stakeholders, including universities positioned within a global knowledge economy and the global educational organisations that influence what counts as knowledge. At the same time, they have also had to respond to localised accountabilities, such as curriculum (linked to global competencies) and, prominently, for these service-oriented professionals, to local communities. The ambiguity evident in these competing constructions emphasises interconnection as both a tension and possibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.