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Teacher Education

Notes • 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.
• 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.
• Unfortunately, these suggestions concern only the adaptation of international educational
systems structured in relation to given economic goals for particular environments. They
do not deal with who is to determine the goals education should aim at and/or the economic
goals themselves.
• Alignment of education and economy has not been the only cause of such decline in the
appeal of teaching as a profession. Other factors one can refer to are the interests teachers
hold; the teachers' acceptance and compliance with such models; the hierarchical and
bureaucratic structures of schools; the failure of governments to promote rich professional
development models and the application of scientific methods, computers and business
efficiency models to education, which is creating a conflict in teacher education since it is at
odds with the increasingly complex and diverse roles of teachers.
• Shortcomings of global economy/educational models that accept these uncritically, the
question arises as to whether one should abandon any effort to adapt education to the
current global situation. Some theorists (Commeyras and Mazile, 2001; Saito, 2003) would
answer in the negative and claim that education can/ought to be adapted to the current
global situation, though not naively.
• As for teachers, these, like all other stakeholders in education, need not accept passively the
current economic-social-political status quo. Indeed, teacher education programmes could
be set which, rather than adopt a neutralist approach towards globalisation, enable teachers
to examine the phenomenon critically and help them devise critical-political pedagogies in
light of values other than those of the economy.
• The key concepts which ought to characterise such models are 'dialogue' and 'global-
understanding'.
• In terms of logistics, if common ground between different parties is found, there is no
guarantee that this will be consistent and consonant, due to the difficulty of coming to a
mutual understanding with those who are different or who have different interests.
• First of all different conceptions of knowledge and pedagogies may be contradictory and
mutually inconsistent. For instance, regarding the teaching profession, there are the different
and competing conceptions of teachers' rights and responsibilities (as well as the different
ways of understanding success or effectiveness in teaching).
• A proponent of this approach may recognise these shortcomings, yet claim that these may
be curtailed or circumvented through the dialogue it suggests. The recognition of such
shortcomings would constitute a challenge rather than a stumbling block.
• The first may be termed 'critical adaptation to the new situation'. This entails the pedagogical
transformations which must be as revolutionary as the technological transformations taking
place. However, this does not necessitate the mere adaptation of pedagogies so as to enable
individual students to deploy multiple technologies in light of the individualistic aims the
capitalist economy might promote.

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