New forms of teacher recruitment and training have emerged that seek to radically reform educational systems in Europe and beyond (Dumay & Burn, 2022; Nesje, 2021; Tatto & Menter, 2022; Schneider & Abs, 2021). Programmes associated with the Teach For All network serve as one example, and now exist in more than 60 countries, from Slovakia to Spain to Sweden (see Thomas et al., 2021). Despite discursive depictions of accelerating and uncomplicated expansion (Lefebvre et al., 2022), their global proliferation has only been possible because of considerable policy changes in various jurisdictions, due in part to TFAll’s consistent role in advancing and benefiting from heterarchical forms of governance (Olmedo et al., 2013, Thomas & Xu, 2022). With this as a backdrop, this paper examines the varied ways in which Teach For All affiliates have engaged in effecting policy change, both to facilitate their entrée into new policy environments and, later, to further alter them. It analyses cases from across the Teach For All literature and draws on empirical data in the form of interviews, policy documents, and digital ethnography to first provide a comparative analysis of the forms of policy change that may be necessary for alternative programmes to enter new jurisdictions, such as reforming teacher certification and licensure policies. Second, the paper explores the means through which Teach For All organisations have sought to effect change prior to and after their emergence, drawing on examples from specific (sub)national contexts. The paper then offers a typology of policy movements and strategies utilised by Teach For All, including working within, beyond, and between existing structures. The paper concludes by raising critical questions about the future of global teacher education policy as well as the methodological challenges involved in studying its shifts, particularly as advanced by closed networks working across amorphous and dynamic policy spaces.

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