Page 163 - DEDU505_TEACHER_EDUCATION_ENGLISH

Unit 17: Globalization and Privatization in Teacher Education

communitarian terms as their aim. The need to make the most of these technological advances Notes
and the opportunities they provide to educators wishing to enhance education has been
emphasised by Kellner.
• This communitarian aspect points to a second aim education should have, what may be
termed the 'humanistic aim'. This requires the acknowledgement of a wide range of other
literacies often neglected in schooling, like the training in philosophy, ethics, value thinking
and humanities.
• The third aim of a critical approach to education should be social justice (Morrow and
Torres 1999, 108). Pedagogical strategies ought to be devised to demonstrate the existent
threats to democracy and freedom, and expose students to ways in which new technologies
can be organized to create a more democratic and egalitarian, multicultural society. This
third aim seems to entail a qualitative leap compared to Saito's proposal.
17.3.11 Limitations to the progressive approach
A shortcoming of this approach is that it still seeks an adaptation, albeit a critical one, to the
global-capitalist model as its ultimate aim. Though such an aim may rightly be envisaged as a
short-term solution, the question arises as to whether it can be maintained in the long run, given
the ethos of the global-capitalist economy. Capitalism is based upon exploitation and unequal
exchange, lest no profits be made. When products are produced through the work of labourers
using the means of production supplied by the capitalist, the labourers receive in wages less than
the value of the products their labour-power creates. Hence, profit results from the exploitation
of workers by the capitalist; following this, the product is sold, bought, exchanged, etc. and
further profit ensues, produced through something getting more value (known as surplus value)
than s/he invested initially in the exchange, and somebody else getting less than his/her initial
investment. Globalisation widens further this relationship. Despite neither the economy nor
education being monoliths, could such a contradictory arrangement - exploitative global economy
on one hand and humanistic educational set-up on the other, be envisaged as permanent?

What is reformist approach to globalization?

17.4 Teacher Professionalizing and Teacher Education for Global World

There are many challenges before the teaching profession. Firstly, teachers need to radically
adapt to the new skills, techniques, methods and demands and secondly a change in the mind set
to take up new responsibilities. It is only then that the teacher can be professionalized.
Teaching is a profession with competing demands. In spite of a high demand for teachers the
profession has not attracted the best with adequate qualifications, training and desire the world
over. As such, the following steps will help in professionalize the profession and the teacher.
• No devaluing of teacher functions
• Good salaries
• Good working conditions
• Flexible hours
• Individualized training to meet the needs of heterogeneous group of teachers catering to
heterogeneous students.
• Constant training in use of new methods of teaching, counseling, meeting curricular demands,
computers, finding and interpreting information
• Autonomy to teachers in classroom management, teaching strategies, arrangement of
furniture and work spaces,
• Standardize the skills and their certification, to be acquired by a teacher enabling it to be
used world over.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 157