Introduction to the Special Issue: International Approaches in Teacher Education

In an effort to gain insights from international settings and globalize our awareness of teacher education practices, this special topic issue of The New Educator brings together a sampling of international research on pre-service teacher education. Keeping in mind that nearly 100% of all academic research on teacher education is published in English by US and British publishing houses (Curry & Lillis, 2017), it is especially important for US and UK teacher educators to actively take up a comparative and international lens and to use our positions of power to ally with authors from under-represented contexts so their voices are heard. This in turn provides the global teacher education community with fresh perspectives on the evolving nature of teacher education and mitigates against a self-centric worldview. By comparing one’s own teacher education to other nations (Darling-Hammond, 2015), normative practices can be better appraised. As contributing author Thompson puts it, “Stepping away from the typical routine improves any myopia. I assert that international engagement can be a powerful mechanism for this stepping away, especially for teachers for whom reflective practice is paramount.”

Through international engagement – whether personal and experiential or through consumption of research – it is apparent that teaching and teacher education are a manifestation of deep local political, social, economic and pedagogical structures. Historic and contextual ideologies inform attitudes about teachers’ roles, how schools should be governed, and who determines the content and agenda for teacher education. Teaching and teacher education methods must necessarily be understood in terms of local particularities, practicalities, and possibilities (Kumaravadivelu, 2003), yet we have much to gain by engaging in dialogue in across contexts.

When teachers and teacher educators have the opportunity to engage in an international exchange of ideas and practice it enhances their intercultural competence, develops more globally-informed and critical perspectives on education, and offers new insights into their local, often unquestioned, approaches to teacher education (Alfaro & Quezada, 2010; Kissock & Richardson, 2010). Through reports from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) we are able to access data and research that drive international comparison and exploration. Much of the success of countries with high achievement stems from the quality of teaching and teacher education in those contexts (Weidman, James Jacob, & Casebeer, 2014). Ingersoll et al. (2007) found that this student achievement derives from the value placed in different countries on teaching careers, with starting salary, competition for seats in teacher education programs, and working conditions accounting for those differentials. Other international comparative research in teacher education has specified the qualitative differences in skills among teacher candidates that arise as a result of their prior education. For instance, research on the pedagogical content knowledge of math teacher candidates from 16 countries suggests that some were very strong on operations, others on alternative problem-solving methods, and others on mathematics methods for teaching. These outcomes remind us that the type of education teachers experience in primary and secondary schools later impacts who they become as teachers (Blömeke, Suhl, & Döhrmann, 2013).

Our different contexts mean that features from one teacher education system do not seamlessly transfer to others. Societal factors such as governmental structures, education policies, cultures, and norms often make generative teacher education practices in one country less effective in others. However, once better understood – often through seeing them in relief next to differing contexts–the presence of these divergent factors often sparks creative responses from teacher educators. Thus, in the spirit not of competition but of collaboration, for this special issue on international approaches in pre-service teacher education, we invited empirical studies, case studies, and descriptive narratives from scholars and practitioners situated in non-US teacher education contexts. We asked authors to clearly address their local context and its characteristics, include a theoretical and conceptual base, and illuminate key areas of teacher preparation practices. The resulting cases offer glimpses into innovative course content or research that respond to a diverse set of needs and challenges, approach clinical experiences in ways that connect to context-specific local K-12 student needs, and suggest new ways we can work within the particularities of our settings.

To begin, Thompson provides a unique entry point to this collection of international authors, by sharing her vantage point both as a dean of a large university system of colleges of teacher education and her recent Fulbright experience in France and Germany. She reminds teacher educators of the value of international experiences as opportunities to “interrupt” unquestioned routines and ways of approaching the work of teacher education and to encourage faculty and teacher candidates to engage in them as a way to deepen ourselves both professionally and personally.

Continuing with the theme of teacher educator as learner, Hamilton presents a nested self-study of her practice as a facilitator of teacher learning. Through a long-term portfolio project, this teacher educator gains insight into her Irish educational landscape and the long-reaching effects of a high-stakes, early-sorting system on the way teachers and teacher educators approach their work. While findings might differ based on context, her method is one any teacher educator could take up: engaging experienced teachers in reflection that provides possible new stances to adopt in the education of novice teachers.

Kourieos and Diakou also tap into working teachers’ knowledge in their investigation of perceptions around preparation for and support for teaching English at the primary grades in Cyprus, this time focusing on novice teachers in the induction years. They take a critical stance towards traditional approaches in teacher education that do not embody the practices teachers will later need to employ in today’s classrooms, and call into question whether mentors and supervisors are able to provide substantive content-specific feedback. Both of these issues are relevant worldwide, and reflect how connections between public schools and university-based teacher preparation need to be strengthened. Their findings strongly point to how teacher preparation must better respond to the realities of local educational policies and systems.

We then travel to Singapore, where we learn from Tan about how a single teacher education course can reveal the deeper structures and ideologies that promote teacher critical thinking. Situating the course in the Singaporean milieu, traditionally thought of as downplaying creativity and independent thinking, Tan describes the use of Shulman’s conceptual framework of signature pedagogies as a road map for teacher education that goes beyond skills and into deeper identity work that allows for new spaces to be created within an ambitious new agenda for teacher education that promotes more responsiveness to students’ individuality and more attention to teachers’ deeper ways of thinking. Her description of the course and its underpinnings provides food for thought for how teacher education can also resist traditional approaches and innovate by integrating frameworks from other contexts and traditions.

Hollweck and colleagues provide a fitting end to our special issue, with their focus on restorative justice practices – a global phenomenon being taken up in schools worldwide – in their local Canadian context. As they put it, “The processes that are currently referred to as restorative have long been evident in Indigenous communities, especially before European colonization” and as such we complete our global exploration of teacher education with a look into the lives and hearts of students. Building and deepening our relationships with each other is the ultimate goal of restorative practices, and from the authors’ investigation of how they infused these practices into their teacher education program, we can orient further to those humanistic practices of teacher development that we, as an international community of teacher educators, can take up together.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.