Challenges To Teacher Education In Difficult Economic Times

Teacher education in a financial crisis – what are the consequences and how can probity be maintained? Education, like most other parts of everyday life, is experiencing the challenges brought about by global financial constrictions. This book presents the experiences and views of practising teacher educators from multiple countries and continents on how the melt-down in world economics has affected and will continue to affect teacher education and concomitant experiences in schooling. The ramifications are seen to extend into every aspect of teacher preparation, continuing staff development and teacher support, and there are significant implications for the quality of teaching and learning, and the ethos and standing of the process of education as a whole. Drawing on educational theory and social, political, and economic discourses, the book addresses issues such as policy, philosophy, organisation, funding, resources, modes of teaching and learning, curricular change, recruitment and retention, amongst others, and provides a snap-shot across diverse contexts. It aims to provide an evaluative, analytical but reflective picture of teacher education in the light of the world economic crisis, whilst exploring good practice and suggesting future strategies to develop the quality of teacher education and professional support, teaching and learning. The volume provides an insight into the need for a new paradigm for teacher education: one that involves teacher educators in devising a discourse of positive and radical change. It will be a valuable resource for teacher educators, educational leaders, policy makers, educational commentators and teachers seeking to engage with the scholarship of teaching as a means to engage in continuous professional development.

Teacher education in a financial crisis – what are the consequences and how can probity be maintained? Education, like most other parts of everyday life, is experiencing the challenges brought about by global financial constrictions. This book presents the experiences and views of practising teacher educators from multiple countries and continents on how the melt-down in world economics has affected and will continue to affect teacher education and concomitant experiences in schooling. The ramifications are seen to extend into every aspect of teacher preparation, continuing staff development and teacher support, and there are significant implications for the quality of teaching and learning, and the ethos and standing of the process of education as a whole. Drawing on educational theory and social, political, and economic discourses, the book addresses issues such as policy, philosophy, organisation, funding, resources, modes of teaching and learning, curricular change, recruitment and retention, amongst others, and provides a snap-shot across diverse contexts. It aims to provide an evaluative, analytical but reflective picture of teacher education in the light of the world economic crisis, whilst exploring good practice and suggesting future strategies to develop the quality of teacher education and professional support, teaching and learning. The volume provides an insight into the need for a new paradigm for teacher education: one that involves teacher educators in devising a discourse of positive and radical change. It will be a valuable resource for teacher educators, educational leaders, policy makers, educational commentators and teachers seeking to engage with the scholarship of teaching as a means to engage in continuous professional development.

Over the past decade, the world has experienced a major economic collapse, the increasing racial inequity and high-profile police killings of unarmed Black and Brown people, the persistence of global terrorism, a large-scale refugee crisis, and the negative impacts of global warming. In reaction to social instability, there are growing populist movements in the United States and across the world, which present major challenges for democracy. Concurrently, there has been a rise of grassroots political movements focused on increasing equity in relation to race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and religion. The role of social studies teachers in preparing the next generation of democratic citizens has never been more important, and the call for more social studies teacher educators to help teachers address these critical issues only gets louder. This volume examines how teacher educators are (or are not) supporting beginning and experienced social studies teachers in such turbulent times, and it offers suggestions for moving the field forward by better educating teachers to address growing local, national, and global concerns. In their chapters, authors in social studies education present research with implications for practice related to the following topics: race, gender, sexual orientation, immigration, religion, disciplinary literacy, global civics, and social justice. This book is guided by the following overarching questions: What can the research tell us about preparing and developing social studies teachers for an increasingly complex, interconnected, and rapidly changing world? How can we educate social studies teachers to “teach against the grain” (Cochran-Smith, 1991, 2001b), centering their work on social justice, social change, and social responsibility?

Teacher education is experiencing a period of dramatic and arguably irrevocable change within a wider context of turbulence in the English education system. With contributions from a range of teacher educators and academics in the field, Teacher Education in Challenging Times presents sustainable, robust, and informed responses to the challenges posed by the current unrest in the education sector. This book considers the nature of teacher professionalism, the nurturing of truly collaborative partnerships between universities, schools and other agencies, and developments in practice with tangible impact for children and young people. Drawing on important research and illustrations of policy and practice from England and other countries, chapters present a series of counter-cultural ideas, principles and practices that respond to pressing challenges facing educators in a range of contexts. Positive and forward-looking, this book offers a robust defence of the present need for high-quality teacher education in challenging times. This book is a timely contribution to an international debate about the future of teacher educators and should be of key interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of teacher education, philosophy and sociology of education, policy and politics of education, and pedagogy. It will also appeal to a range of practitioners, including trainers, local authority officers, professional groups, educational service providers, and educational and school improvement consultants.

Like other fields of study, teacher education defines itself both by what it includes and by what it excludes. Teacher educators and researchers have spent a great deal of time seeking and attempting to eradicate the flaws in existing structures and practices, but significantly less time learning to perceive the absences.

Thinking about teaching in educational terms has become increasingly difficult because of the conceptions of higher education that predominate in both policy and public debate. Framing the benefits of higher education simply as an economic good poses particular difficulties for making educational sense of teaching. Moreover, the assumptions about social mobility, usefulness, and the economic advantages of higher education, upon which these conceptions are based, can no longer be taken for granted. The chapters in this book all wrestle with understandings of education and teaching experiences in changing global, national, and institutional contexts. They explore questions of difference and privilege, the social transformation of teaching through transforming teachers, contestations of global citizenship and interculturality, learning and sensibilities of self-in-the-world, the relationship between programme content and student decision-making, divergent conceptions of learning in international education, and subject-centred approaches to embodied teaching. The book considers the value of disciplinary tools of analysis in addressing contextual challenges in developing societies, connections between pedagogies, autonomy and intercultural classrooms, and ways of countering the marketization of higher education through online teaching communities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Teaching in Higher Education.

The Montgomery bus boycott, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and Brown v. Board of Education reveal incentives to reform as a result of economic, political and legal threat. It is difficult to change a person’s heart, or to change based on moral conviction alone. However, policies and laws can be established that will change a person’s behavior. Historically, there was rarely a time where societal changes were the result of a desire to do what was morally right. Doing what is right was contingent upon economic advantages, political motivation or the threat of litigation. By the mid 1900s the NAACP had learned a valuable lesson in the South, that litigation or the threat of litigation was an effective tool in the quest for educational equality (Douglas, 1995). More recently, the #metoo movement and the Los Angeles teacher’s strike exposed corrupt behavior and insufficient working environments that have existed for decades. What is different? They have been exposed through political, economic and legal means. As it pertains to educating African Americans, there was an ongoing role of servitude in the political economy of the South (Anderson, 1988). This was subsequently disrupted through political, economic, and legal measures during Reconstruction. Racist ideologies and economic advantages were seen through Jim Crow Laws (Roback, 1984) that were again disrupted through political, economic, and legal methods. Education has also been cited as what perpetuates our democracy. It is institutions that afford its citizens the skills and knowledge necessary for political participation (Rury, 2002). Even when legal cases are unsuccessful, such as Puitt v. Commissioners of Gaston County or Plessy v. Ferguson, they can forge the way to successful litigation dismantling racist ideologies that oppress African Americans. Although the Puitt decision did not remove the processes of discrimination against Black schools, it left intact the legal basis on segregated and unequal education (Douglas, 1995). As citizens, it is imperative that we participate in the political process and use our authority to mandate the changes we would like to see in urban education. When theorizing this book, the intent was to provide an interdisciplinary look at solutions to critical issues in urban education through political, economic, and legal avenues. This book seeks to provide an interdisciplinary approach to solving the issues in education while connecting it to the effects on teacher preparation. Using historical and recent examples, scholars can piece together solutions that will guide others to political, economic, and legal action necessary to dismantle systems that have bound Black and Brown children. It is our intent to offer innovative, yet grounded solutions that can purposefully move the conversation about solutions to critical issues in education to political, economic, and legal actions.

World wide the production of teachers has become a sharp political issue during the early years of the twenty first century. Current systems for ensuring a supply of capable and knowledgeable teachers have come sustained under attack from politicians, economists, parents’ organisations and social critics alike.

Adopting a political economy perspective, Viv Ellis, Lauren Gatti and Warwick Mansell present a unique and international analysis of teacher education policy in the US, England and Norway after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.