Blended Intensive Programmes are currently trending and were recently introduced in the Erasmus+ Programme 2021-2027 (European Commission, 2021). This paper explores Spica, a Blended Intensive Programme that focuses on global challenges in local Nordic contexts. Our research focuses on the impact of such a programme in engaging preservice teachers in global issues.  

Internationalisation has become a central priority in higher education over the last two decades, and more recently in teacher education (Jones et al., 2016; Abraham & Brömssen, 2018; Li & Santoro 2021). Although teacher education typically is a national or regional matter, global issues and challenges are becoming increasingly important in education (Fox et al., 2020), one example being Agenda 2030, encouraging both local and global engagement. According to Mikulec (2014, p. 5), building on critical theory, psychology, and student development theory, five dispositions are essential for preparing teachers for global engagement: curiosity, tolerance for ambiguity, reflexivity, flexibility and persistence.

Spica is a Nordic teacher educator network that organises an annual Blended Intensive Programme for preservice teachers from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland. The course consists of a virtual period and an intensive course week held on a rotational basis at one of the participating institutions. The virtual part consists of two online seminars, where students discuss the course material, such as reading, films and lectures based on the flipped classroom approach (Walker et al., 2020). Here, participants are introduced to the place they are going to visit in the second part of the course, the themes and goals for the course, which take the Agenda 2030 as their point of departure, as well as concepts such as multiculturalism, citizenship, critical thinking, Challenge-Based Learning and Placed-Based Education (PBE). The second and central part of the courses is an intensive one-week residential period held at one of the member institutions. PBE (Lowenstein et al., 2018) is one of the main learning approaches in this part of the course. Through school and field visits, lectures, meeting with various stakeholders and other activities, the participating preservice teachers are confronted with social, economic, political, and cultural issues in the local community where the course is held. Divided into groups consisting of one local preservice teacher and four from other countries, participants work with one of several challenges of global significance, which the community they visit faces. At the end of the course, the groups make a presentation on how their chosen challenge can be met in an educational context.

Our research question is:  How did Spica as a Blended Intensive Programme help students engage with global challenges and inspire them to address these in their own local context. Using Mikulec’s dispositions, we will discuss how useful students found the Spica course in helping them engaging with global issues, especially considering their future teaching practice. Considering that one of our teaching approaches, PBE, is designed for local engagement, we will also discuss whether this approach is appropriate when used in a programme that focuses on global engagement—is a central aim in PBE lost or is it translocated?

This paper will be based on a) reflection papers from student teachers who have attended the course in 2020 (Denmark) and 2021 (Norway), and b) group interview with educators involved in the course. In coding the papers, thematic analysis will be used (Braun and Clark, 2006). In their reflection papers, the participating students were asked to reflect on the learning process (including the online course and the intensive course), and on what they believed they could take home with them from the course (e.g. teaching methods, course themes, and how they could use Agenda 2030 in their local educational context). The main themes that emerge from the thematic analysis will be used in a semi-structured group interview (Brinkmann and Kvale, 2015) with key educators in the programme, who were involved in both courses.

We expect that the Spica course may be seen as a model for internationalization aiming at developing locally embedded and globally engaged student teachers. We expect that Spica as a Blended Intensive Programme, where PBE is one of the primary learning approaches, has helped the students to 1) engage with the challenged faced by the communities they visited, 2) relate these challenges to larger global concerns, and 3) see PBE’s potential for their own teaching practice in their own local context.

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