The 21^st Century is characterised by a globalized, rapidly changing and technology-based economy. In this new landscape, education has to be structured to meet current needs while anticipating emerging trends for students in the 21^st century. The key to developing 21^st century educational opportunities is teacher education. The basis of this education must move from preparing teachers to be technicians, transmitters and implementers of knowledge (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 16), to teachers who are thoughtful, reflective and inquiring. Teachers need to recognise their role as active practitioners of education. Successful teachers must be professional leaders who assume personal responsibility for continuous learning, question their own assumptions, reflect and think critically about their profession and their practice, and inquire and make informed decisions about teaching and the learning needs of their students (e.g., Tan, 2003).

Teacher education literature points us to inquiry-based approaches as a way of preparing teachers who are thoughtful, reflective and inquiring. However, there is limited amount of theoretical and empirical work done in teacher education that focuses on teacher learning as the outcome (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005). Thus, there is a need for more conversation internationally on inquiry in teacher education, and more high-level research globally that defines critical components of quality teacher education programmes.

Many teacher education institutions have programmes that strive to prepare teachers to be thinkers and researchers who are adaptive to the changing demands of the education environment. They achieve this through different approaches and with the use of different tools.  To facilitate the inquiry approach, several institutions interweave clinical experience with university teaching to strengthen the theory-practice link. Other institutions incorporate a globalised experience for their pre-service teachers to facilitate and increase their competence to be culturally responsive and adaptable in a globally connected world today. In addition, there are institutions which use professional conversations to deepen pre-service teachers’ reflections and analyses of their teaching experience, while other institutions implement tools such as the learning portfolio to help pre-service teachers develop a cognitive map teaching and learning.

In this symposium, the first paper will touch on how the e-Portfolio serves as a tool to develop thinking teacher in Singapore. The second paper will examine the internationalisation of student teaching and how the international practicum experience has enhanced teacher education programme in the University of California, Santa Barbara. This is followed by paper three that will touch on how the reform in Danish teacher educational curricula has shifted from a focus on content to competences in an attempt to prepare teachers capable of meeting the needs of the 21^st century learners. Last but not least, the fourth paper will look at the strengthening of theory-practice nexus with elements of guided reflection through mentoring and coaching in a teacher education programme in Zurich, Switzerland.

Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. (1999). The teacher research movement: A decade later. Educational Researcher, 28(7), 15-25 Cochran-Smith, M., & Zeichner, K. M. (Eds.). (2005). Studying Teacher Education: The Report of the AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education. America: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Tan, O. S. (2003). Problem-Based Learning Innovation. Singapore: Thomson.