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Unit 17: Globalization and Privatization in Teacher Education

be able to succeed in a hi-tech economy. Competitiveness-driven reforms, i.e. reforms aimed at Notes
educating society at large so as to make it more economically competitive, are enacted to attain
such ends. In this regard, Fischman maintains that globalised economies need flexible and creative
workers. This necessitates students to develop a fundamental ability - trainability; the disposition
to be continuously taught and trained.
Regarding teachers, these need to rethink the necessary collective responses to global challenges
that are influencing the teaching profession, where the word 'challenges' is generally understood
to mean the challenges and opportunities entailed by a capitalist economy. Teachers are expected
to mould students in light of economic trends and challenges, and to pass the skills necessary to
create a workforce capable of achieving these. In light of this, teacher education is likely to be
highly standardised. This implies that teacher education programmes are regulated by the state
or by local education authorities.
17.3.4 Limitations to the economic efficiency approach
One should note that this drift towards standardisation is not limited to government initiatives.
Through the influence of electronic media, genres are set by curriculum design experts. These
generally lead to the standardization not only of the topic itself, but also of the logistics through
which the topic itself is learnt. Argues, can involve many drawbacks - educators tend to become
checklist teachers; their profession would lack risks, unpredictability and the magic of teaching.
Furthermore, points out that a cheap, one-size-fits-all 'standard' in teacher education may turn
out to be ineffective with regard to the promotion of human resources and the competitiveness
of the economy in general. The knowledge economy requires creativity, collaboration and self-
management; the teacher is afforded a greater autonomy to adopt innovate teaching methods
and is responsible for maximising knowledge acquisition. These are features which standardised
models are unlikely to promote.
Teachers may not share common social, economic and cultural characteristics, and hence it may
not be a good idea to standardise teacher education. In this regard, it is worth noting that despite
these centralising trends, the influence of the state is not total. Indeed, there are experiments
aimed at promoting a deregulation of the providers of teacher education programmes at varying
levels, in response to broader cultural and economic conditions. A settlement is generally formed
among these different factors which mould the teachers' identity.
17.3.5 Supply/demand and economic efficiency - limitations to both
approaches
Despite the differences between these approaches (regulation and standardisation vs. individual
choices and market forces), Regarding teachers, these approaches ignore the role teachers may
have as possible agents of change and aim exclusively at having the teachers fit the capitalist/
global economic models they accept. Teachers are considered as mere functions of the economy
at large, as indeed are the students to which these models are intended to cater.
Indeed, it is the limited scope of the aims they put forward that makes them liable to some
serious criticism. They seem to narrow down excessively the roles of education in general and of
teachers in particular. Their main deficiency is arguably their failure to include critical elements
both within the models they promote and in relation to globalisation.
17.3.6 Global educational models - a criticism
Proliferation of global educational models, which uncritically accept globalisation and adapt
education to the demands of globalisation, incorporates considerable limitations, both on a general
level, and on the teacher education level in particular.
Global educational models that promote collaborative efforts across continents and countries
tend to conceal certain shortcomings, in that they disrupt traditional ways of teaching, knowing
and learning and provide a threat to cultural diversity. A complex system of power relations and
control induces, maintains and legitimates pedagogy, in the sense that it distributes its own
consciousness, identity and desire.

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