Provide a clear outline of your research question and your theoretical framework. Bear in mind that

the European/international dimension is vital to the success of your submission.

up to 600 words

Topic:  Standardisation, Diversity and Decolonisation: Enactment of Global Policies around Teaching Quality in Different Nations.

Research Question: How are teacher educators dealing with the tensions between different policy discourses which standardise quality teaching and the uncertainties which arose in struggles to decolonise curricula and pedagogies in universities?

Objectives: To develop theoretical and methodological resources to explore the enactment of global policies around quality teaching on teacher education programs and practices. The theoretical resources will include concepts from disciplinary fields such as decolonial studies (Critical Indigenous Studies, Asia as Method, Colonial Matrix of Power), as well as critical policy studies drawing on post-Foucauldian and post-Bernsteinian scholarship.

Conceptual Framework:  The neoliberal educational scenarios projected by international organisations such as the OECD, World Bank and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has ‘led to a new way of thinking about how schools, technical colleges, universities and educational systems should be governed’ (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010, p. 117).  National governments and the bureaucratic administrative state are no longer the only source of policy authority when it comes to teacher education. Increasingly international organisations, such as the OECD (2005, 2018), with their assemblage of measurement instruments, survey tools, online professional engagement videos, databases, and platforms govern teachers’ work and determine what constitutes ‘quality’ of teachers, teaching, and teacher education programs (Singh et al., 2021). Globalising discourses operate both hierarchically and heterarchically (Ball, 2016). Hierarchically, national governments may take the brunt of negative evaluation arising from publication of comparative test scores. Heterarchical effects mean that school leaders, class teachers and teacher educators can also be attacked directly through various media, including social media platforms. Moreover, the teaching workforce (including teacher educators) are held accountable and responsible for improving student performance outcomes and directed through the bureaucratic arms of the state to reform curriculum and pedagogies accordingly. The purposes of education are reconfigured in narrow instrumentalist terms, and so is the work of teachers and teacher educators, leading to the deprofessionalisation of the teaching workforce (see Robertson & Sorenson, 2018). At the same time, there are fewer people enrolling in teacher education programs and retention of teachers, particularly in schools situated in high poverty, culturally and linguistically diverse contexts is difficult. Moreover, there are increasing calls to decolonise university curriculum, which at a basic performative level, equates to a demand for more diversity in the teacher education workforce and inclusion of research by non-white scholars. In this symposium, each of the papers deals with the contradictory issues of standardisation and decolonisation of teacher education programs. The former aims to create uniform standards or norms, the latter seeks recognition for increasing cultural and linguistic diversity within nation states, and reconciliation for ongoing colonial injustices.  

Ball, S. J. (2016). Subjectivity as a site of struggle: refusing neoliberalism? British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37(8), 1129-1146. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2015.1044072 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2005). Teachers Matter: Attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers. OECD Publishing. Retrieved from https://www.oecd.org/education/school/34990905.pdf Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2018). Effective Teacher Policies: Insights from PISA. OECD Publishing. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264301603-en Robertson, S. L., & Sorensen, T. (2018). Global transformations of the state, governance and teachers’ labour: Putting Bernstein’s conceptual grammar to work. European Educational Research Journal, 17(4), 470-488. https://doi:10.1177/1474904117724573 Singh, P., Hoyte, F., Heimans, S., & Exley, B. (2021). Teacher Quality and Teacher Education: A Critical Policy Analysis of International and Australian Policies.. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 46(4). http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2021v46n4.1 Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing Educational Policy. Routledge.