INTERNATIONAL STUDENT TEACHING IN WORLD LANGUAGE EDUCATION: CRITICAL CRITERIA FOR GLOBAL TEACHERHOOD

Abstract

In world language teacher education, there are few opportunities that integrate preparing prospective educators for meaningful participation in intercultural dialogues and for deeper understanding of value conflicts. Student teaching abroad offers one such promising opportunity. With our conceptualization of a critical systems approach towards heightened global awareness, we present an alternative framework that can be used in studies on international student teaching (IST). Furthermore, we theorize a type of mindset that intercultural understanding can develop in student teachers: global teacherhood. After reviewing studies and drawing attention to the importance of preparing teachers for intercultural communication in their field experiences, we discuss the elements of our framework that include teacher reflection and worldview reframing. Focusing on interpretive findings from our exploratory study, we apply critical systems criteria to the cases of two prospective teachers participating in an IST program.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the pre-service teachers, host families, and the supervisor in Ecuador who participated in this study. We would also like to thank the reviewers and the editors for their thoughtful comments.

Notes

¹The scope of this article does not leave room for a discussion of various perspectives on globalization and “glocalization.” An extensive discussion can be found in Ritzer, G. (2004). The globalization of nothing. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

²See http://www.ed.gov/legislation/GOALS2000/TheAct/index.html

³For both cases, pseudonyms were used. There is no association between assigned pseudonyms and the actual participants.