Introduction

This session describes a research project focused on internationalizing the curriculum in undergraduate and graduate teacher education programs in Norway and in the USA.  This curriculum aims to foster preservice and in-service teachers’ global competence. Global competence is understood as “the capacity and disposition to understand and act on issues of global significance” (Boix Mansilla, 2016/2017 p. 12).  There is urgency around preparing globally competent teachers who can prepare today’s children for life as interconnected and interdependent global citizens in complex and diverse societies (Parkhouse, Glazier, Tichnor-Wagner, & Cain, 2015; Zhao, 2010).

The researchers aimed to infuse international learning experiences that reach beyond the instrumentalist goals of improved competitive advantage in a global marketplace (de Wit and Leask, 2015 p. xiii; Green & Whitsed, 2015 p. 3).  That is, we embraced the view that education must contribute to social justice nationally and globally (Cochran-Smith et al., 2016). 

Research Question and Objectives

We investigated the question, How may a cross-national collaborative effort contribute to fostering educators’ global competence and readiness to incorporate global competence through a social justice lens in primary and secondary education?  Session objectives include:

• Describe our collaboration, which aimed to internationalize teacher education through a social justice lens;
• Share the creation of a curriculum focused on inclusion/exclusion of refugees and immigrants across time and international contexts;
• Explain how we situated this curriculum within teacher education during 2018-2019; and
• Convey results of participating educators’ responses to the way that the curriculum may have strengthened their preparation for teaching for global competence.

Theoretical Framework

Internationalization of the curriculum is defined as «… the process of incorporating international, intercultural and global dimensions into the content of the curriculum as well as the learning outcomes, assessment tasks, teaching methods and support services of a program of study» (de Wit & Leask, 2015 p. xii).  Teacher education has been slow to internationalize, as the mandate of primary and secondary education traditionally has been to prepare future citizens of nation states (Whitsed & Green, 2015 p. 85).

A social justice dimension can be integrated into efforts to internationalize teacher education through the lens of critical pedagogy. Education for social justice provides internationalization for all students, not only privileged students who participate in international study abroad experiences. We build on Paulo Freire’s ideas of concientization (Freire, 1992) and problem-posing education centered on raising levels of consciousness by involving learners in critically examining conditions close to their own experiences, making it possible to perceive the way they exist in the world and “come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation” (Freire 1993, p. 65).  This approach can build educators’ understanding that teachers are cultural, political, and social beings who are situated in local and global contexts and whose ways of thinking, believing, and acting are influenced by race, ethnicity, social class, and language (O’Connor & Zeichner, 2011). 

Fostering global competence from a critical lens means providing teacher candidates with learning experiences that illuminate the causes and consequences of global economic disparities, including the marginalization of peoples through cultural and racial systems of domination (O’Connor & Zeichner, 2011).  This type of learning may support educators in creating curricula that nurture primary and secondary school learners’ inclination and capacity to explore issues of global significance across disciplines (Klein, 2013; Leduc, 2013; Girard & Harris, 2013).  Research is needed about how educators can develop primary and secondary school learners’ global consciousness and the competencies necessary for creating a more just and sustainable world  (Tichnor-Wagner, Parkhouse, Glazier, & Cain, 2016).

Methods Teacher educators share a responsibility to foster critical consciousness in ways that are responsive to the transnational, multicultural, and multilingual children who fill today’s classrooms across the globe (O’Connor & Zeichner, 2011). Creating spaces for critically examining issues of global significance and their interconnectedness across contexts and cultures can provide teacher candidates with the tools to design instruction for primary and secondary learners that affords ongoing opportunities to rethink assumptions, identify misinformation, and consider alternative ways to make decisions (Merryfield, 2012; Boix Mansilla, 2016/2017). There is no single method for carrying out this work (O’Connor & Zeichner, 2011). One promising approach is to engage teacher candidates in the kinds of activities that can be designed with primary and secondary school learners to promote an inquiry stance, perspective taking, respectful dialog, and responsible action around issues of global significance (Boix Mansilla & Jackson, 2011). Over the course of one year, including two weeks in which we visited one another’s universities in Norway and in the U.S., we designed a curriuculm comprising five modules around teaching for global competence from a social justice perspective. These modules included practice application activities for current and future teachers to examine critically the issue of inclusion/exclusion of immigrant and refugee children across time and global contexts. We piloted this curriculum in one of the researcher’s asynchronous, online teacher education graduate courses in fall 2018 and spring 2019. Participants included preservice and in-service teachers who were enrolled in a graduate program focused on preparing educators to teach culturally and linguistically diverse primary and secondary learners in the U.S. and internationally. Within the five modules, we introduced Global thinking routines (Boix Mansilla & Jackson, 2011), or microteaching tools that prompt inquiry, perspective taking, dialog, and action in response to powerful provocations (e.g., artwork, news stories, photographs, children’s literature). We invited teacher candidates to explore these provocations and apply the global thinking routines around the issue of inclusion/exclusion of immigrant and refugee children. Participants also developed and shared an outline of a mini-unit designed to provide primary and secondary learners with an opportunity to examine critically an issue of global significance. Qualitative data analysis included coding of patterns and themes from participants’ discussion board posts, global thinking routines, and mini-unit outlines. Quantitative data analysis included identifying any shifts in participants’ knowledge, dispositions, and skills around teaching for global competence based on a pre- and post-questionnaire.

Outcomes Preliminary data analysis from fall 2018 suggested that participants’ knowledge, disposition, and skills for teaching for global competence grew to varying degrees over the five modules. Participants indicated an appreciation for engaging with specific pedagogical tools for teaching for global competence that could be applied in their current or future teaching. These results also suggested that participants viewed teaching for global competence as an important aim for schools and educators. As the developers of this project, we assert that developing opportunities for teacher candidates to explore teaching for global competence from a social justice perspective is relevant for both teacher education and primary and secondary education within each country’s education system. This project also suggests positive implications for embedding this type of curriculum development in teacher education and/or professional development across countries and cultures. In addition, this internationalization effort adds a third dimension, beyond learning facts about national history and society, as well as facts about another country’s history and culture. Through studying cases across time and place, teacher education students explore the concepts of inclusion/exclusion and citizenship both as situated national phenomena as well as global human phenomena. Thus, they gain knowledge about the particular histories of their nation states, within which they will practice as teachers, thereby enhancing their own global competence and pedagogical preparation for teaching for global competence. The comparative dimensions of time and space relocate educators in the outsider’s position, opening a critical vantage point. This viewpoint lends itself more readily to critical enquiry and the development of critical thinking than being encapsulated within a national vantage point. Being able to generalize and learn theoretical concepts supports teacher candidates in describing and acting on their world both locally and globally and preparing the children in their classrooms to do so as well.

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