Jeanette Major

Learning to be a culturally responsive teacher through international study trips: transformation or tourism?

Recent rapid changes in the ethnic and cultural make-up of school communities have highlighted the need for teacher education to prepare teachers for culturally diverse contexts. International study trips provide direct experience and interaction with culturally diverse ‘others’ as a way to extend pre-service teachers’ understandings of difference and diversity. This paper presents findings from a qualitative study that investigated the experiences of 15 Australian pre-service teachers who attended a short-term study programme in either Korea or India. Drawing on notions of the ‘comfort zone’ and ‘pedagogies of discomfort’, we discuss how the pre-service teachers were challenged to move beyond their comfort zone into new and unfamiliar territory, and into states of dissonance and discomfort. Three interrelated themes emerged from the interview data: (1) dissonance resulting from physical discomfort; (2) dissonance resulting from culturally different communication styles and expectations about appropriate behaviour and interaction and (3) dissonance resulting from incidents/events that challenged the pre-service teachers’ views of themselves and their own cultures. We suggest that many of the participants experienced levels of discomfort and dissonance that hindered effective learning, and limited the transformative potential of the experience. We conclude by discussing some implications for international experience programmes in teacher education.

Shifting conceptualisations of knowledge and learning in initial teacher education in Aotearoa/New Zealand

This paper reports on the research project ‘Shifting conceptualisations of knowledge and learning in the integration of the new New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) in initial and continuing teacher education’, which was funded by the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative of the New Zealand government. The project maps the learning processes of practitioner‐researchers in their initiatives in the integration of the new NZC in their teacher education practices. The project is informed by discursive approaches that emphasise the instability of signification and the location of the subject in language. It used a range of specific conceptual and pedagogical tools designed to bridge theoretical debates relevant to the implementation of the NZC and the research itself. This research focuses on teacher educators’ narratives and strategies used to negotiate their theories/practices and subjectivities within the complexities and constraints of their own narratives, institutions and communities. The first part of this paper provides a brief overview of the theoretical and methodological frameworks of the research, and three of the conceptual tools used to bridge theoretical debates. The second part presents a snapshot of one case study, offering a situated analysis of a small part of the data collected in a graduate teacher education course focusing on social and cultural studies. This paper is written with a view to illustrate the benefits and challenges of engaging with theory through conceptual tools developed with the aim to create different possibilities for the production of meaning around pedagogical practices in teacher education.

Preparing teachers through international experience:: A collaborative critical analysis of four Australian programs

In an increasingly internationalized, interconnected and globalized world, characterized in many school education contexts by diverse classrooms and varied student needs, the importance for teachers to develop an intercultural competence has become urgent. International experiences, embedded within teacher education, are seen as one means to enhance this capability. In this Australian study, coordinators of international professional experiences from four NSW universities discuss and interrogate the strengths and weaknesses of their own and each other’s programs, guided by an established evaluation framework for such programs. Findings indicate that, while support for such programs is strong in the lead-up to and during such international experiences, subsequent evaluation of these programs and reflection remain underdeveloped. Implications for international professional experience programs are discussed.

Changing pedagogical practice in teacher education: Negotiating the spaces between realism and relativism

This article reports a self-study from a larger research project that explored the impact on pre-service and in-service teacher education of a new national curriculum in New Zealand and the conceptualisations of epistemological shifts signalled by that document. A pedagogical initiative to introduce inquiry-based learning into a graduate diploma course for pre-service primary teachers was the result of and the catalyst for further reflection on my practice and the (mis)alignments between my theoretical understandings and beliefs and my pedagogical choices. In this article I focus on the tensions and contradictions I encountered while attempting to enact, in a tertiary environment, a pedagogy that aligned with the underpinning principles of the new curriculum. I describe the model that I developed to understand those tensions and contradictions, which are characterised as the spaces between realism and relativism. I suggest that negotiating these spaces is part of the process of becoming a teacher and a teacher educator in the twenty-first century.

Supervising an international teaching practicum: building partnerships in postcolonial contexts

Abstract Teaching practicum experiences, including those in international contexts, are based on partnerships between institutions and host schools, and the partnership between the pre-service teacher, the cooperating teacher and the university supervisor. This article explores the relationship between pre-service teachers and cooperating teachers in an international practicum in the Solomon Islands. It considers the way the cooperating teachers were positioned within the partnership, and raises questions about the way the university engages with host schools and teachers in international contexts, particularly in developing countries. Drawing on postcolonial theory, we investigate the complexity and contradictions in relationships between the pre-service teachers and cooperating teachers. We conclude by offering suggestions for valuing the role of cooperating teachers in these contexts.

Introducing Global Teaching and Southern Perspectives

Southern Theory provides the framing theory for this edited collection, and in this chapter Reid and Major outline their engagement with its key concepts and constructs in relation to cultural and linguistic diversity in education contexts in the global North and South. Intercultural education and culturally relevant/responsive teaching are discussed as common responses to diversity, and are problematized using Southern Theory. The aim is to prompt dialogue about equity and social justice from “below” in education, and the tensions, contradictions and complexities that lie at the heart of achieving this.

Personal Epistemologies and Pedagogical Play: Changing Practice in Teacher Education

Teaching in the twenty-first century requires the ability to live with complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty, to be able to hold open possibilities and not look for easy answers to complex issues. Future-oriented teachers will need to be knowledgeable, theoretically grounded, epistemologically aware and professionally reflexive. This chapter demonstrates the impact of playing with pedagogy and understanding how it is shaped by personal epistemologies and ontologies.