In the current historical period, in which global comparative tests of different school systems play an important role in educational policies, and teacher quality is identified as a key to economic performance; Teacher Education (TE) has become an object of continuous reflection and reform. For these reasons, several international studies have addressed the role of teachers, the training systems, and the quality of teaching, providing a wide and discussed overview on the topic (ET2020, 2015; Musset, 2010). Therefore, interweaving the various international perspectives and studies, this research project focuses on initial teacher education programmes (ITEPs), in a comparative perspective by taking in account two different countries: Italy and Ireland. The study deals with initial teacher preparation since it is considered as an important source for school system improvement and implications. In particular, the research considers the support that the university system gives to prospective teachers in developing their professional role. The literature in fact, underlines that teacher professionalism  have an impact to the school systems (Priestley, et. al., 2015). It is therefore, considering future primary school teachers’ beliefs that the study underline how initial training and the role of pre-service teachers is developed (Biesta, et.al., 2015), also considering the Korthegan theory (Tarozzi and Inguaggiato, 2018). In addition, considering the assumptions according to which beliefs are always related to an object (Pajares 1992, in Priestley et al., 2015), the study investigates the student’s teachers’ beliefs with a focus on values, attitudes and awareness promoted by the institution, instead of didactic competence. Moreover, the meaning of competence underlying the present conceptual framework is expressed through the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (Barret, 2020) in which the idea of ‘competence’ refers to: values, attitudes, competence and, knowledge and critical comprehension. Therefore, ITEPs are taken into analysis by positioning them as more than just sources of new qualified and disciplinarily competent teachers, but understanding the transmission of values aimed to a sense of equity for global awareness citizens (Ainscow, 2016; Cochran - Smith, 2020). In particular, considering the definition of global citizenship education (GCE) promoted extensively in the last decades (Stein, 2015), the conceptual framework investigates the student teacher perceptions. For this reason, this study explores the context in which future professional teacher develop themselves as agentic practitioner, and the ITE contribution to reproduce a sense of global awareness understanding of school issues (Liao, et.al., 2022; Tarozzi and Mallon, 2019). Is therefore fundamental to have experienced teachers committed to the development of quality and equity in today’s school reality, according to international agenda and reality school issues.

The main questions that this study outlines, drawing on both theoretical and comparative aspects, are posed as follows: 

1) In which way Higher Education systems prepare future primary school teachers through ITE programmes? 

2) What are the prospective teachers’ beliefs about their training and professional role? in which way emerge from them a sense of global awareness?

3) How these beliefs influence their agency?

The methodological approach that will be adopted to answer the research questions is organize as follows on a qualitative field of analysis. The research project is structured through multiple case studies, where ITEPs are the unit of analysis, comparative in nature and analyzed in parallel (Bray, Adamson and Mason, 2014). Specifically, the comparative criteria to analyse the two ITEPs are as follow: the university-based programmes, the EU context and the length of the programmes (4/5 years). The two case studies examined will be carried out by adopting qualitative tools for data collection, such as: semi-structured interviews, observations, focus groups and curriculum analysis. In particular, semi-structured interview developed with 10/15 prospective primary school teachers and 2 focus groups in every context, to understand their beliefs related to their preparations and values in terms of equity for global awareness. In addition, around 6 interviews are conducted with university tutor to give a contextual perspective about the programmes and the preparation that ITEPs aiming to give. In addition, observations of teacher training lectures in which reflective practices are developed, to gain a more complete understanding of the contexts presented. Therefore, a curriculum analysis aims to report the main structural and organizational characteristic of the ITE curriculum, underlying differences, and similarities of the two contexts. This research takes place on a qualitative field as the interest was not the acquisition of data (Cohen, et al., 2018; Ravitch and Carl, 2019), but an in-depth exploratory research project related to the pre-service teacher’s preparation. This model in fact gave the permission to focus mainly on the characteristics of the object of the study.

The aim of this comparative research project focusing on pre-service teacher preparation seeks to emphasise the importance of investigating values and attitudes of student teachers, instead of the relevance of teaching skills; considering the underlying motivations and the type of pedagogic culture that drive curricula in different contexts. Therefore, through the studies and theories cited in the conceptual framework, it was possible to deepen the examined the focus. The research provides a qualitative exploratory design on ITEPs to understand how future teachers are trained in terms of a global education perspective. In doing so, the research shows a bottom-up lens of analysis and reported the main features of divergence/convergence between the case studies in Italy and Ireland. Indeed, it was possible to understand the main factors shaping initial teacher education and agency development in the sense of a global education in the two contexts. Furthermore, these results of the focus underline the importance and relevance of paying attention to pre-service teachers' preparation and investigating their agency starting from their beliefs. It became clear from the study's reflection that it is even more important today that future teachers who start acting in school systems are prepared to deal with problems at the glocal level. Moreover, considering the qualitative nature of the study there is no ambition to generalise this data for the countries examined, the results can be seen as indicative and a useful starting point for future research. Therefore, trying to contribute to the reflection on teachers' preparation is crucial for future debate in the field.

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