Marianne A. Larsen

Troubling the Discourse of Teacher Centrality: A Comparative Perspective.

The belief in the central role of the teacher has a long and comparative history. This article aims to critically analyse the discourse of the centrality of the teacher by both historicising and problematising the ideas and practices associated with this discourse. First, the article describes the discourse as it was taken up during the twenty‐first century when the teacher was viewed as the linchpin to building universal education systems. The idea that the ‘master makes the school’ is examined and the policies that stemmed from this thinking (e.g., the establishment of formal teacher training, teacher testing and certification) are outlined. The contemporary manifestations of this discourse are then described to show how the pervasive belief in the central role of the teacher has influenced education policy reforms, which like teacher policy reforms in the nineteenth century operate to shape and regulate the profession. Further discursive effects are analysed including the de‐contextualisation of educational reform and the de‐professionalisation and de‐politicisation of teachers and their work. The relationship between effective schools research and the centrality of the teacher discourse is also considered within the contemporary moment. This comparative study refers to the discourse of the centrality of the teacher in Australasia, Europe, Great Britain and North America, and suggests that our collective focus on the teacher has had some serious, unexpected effects on teachers and the work they do.

Spatial Theorizing in Comparative and International Education Research

The authors argue for a critical spatial perspective in comparative and international education. We briefly summarize how time and space have been conceptualized within our field. We then review mainstream social science literature that reflects a metanarrative, which we critique for contributing to false dichotomies between space and place and oversimplified views of the relationship between the global and the local. We present some of the key ideas associated with the “spatial turn,” including a relational understanding and productive capacity of space. In the final part of this article, we analyze the significance of new spatial theorizing for comparative and international education by reviewing examples of both comparative and educational researchers who are engaging with critical spatial theorizing. We argue that a possible way to confront binary thinking about space and place is by shifting attention to the relational conceptions of space, through analyses of networks, connections, and flows.

A Critical Analysis of Teacher Evaluation Policy Trends

Modernising the teaching profession has become one of the main goals of contemporary educational system reform. The evaluation of teachers has been integral to the new teacher quality policies and programs. This article provides a comparative and critical analysis of the evaluations that teachers now confront during their professional careers. Examples of teacher evaluation practices and processes from Australia, Canada, the United States, and England are described and analysed.

North American insecurities, fears and anxieties: educational implications

Contemporary North American insecurities and fears are the focus of this article. In the first section, the inter‐related concepts of insecurity, fear and vulnerability are theorised, and the argument put forward that these have come to constitute a dominant discourse in contemporary North American society. In the second section of the paper, the components of this discourse are presented by reviewing what North Americans fear, including terrorism, crime and violence, and the ‘Other’. Comparisons and local manifestations of this discourse in Canada, Mexico and the US are described. The final section turns to the educational implications (effects) of this discourse as it has been taken up across the three nations. While other comparativists have focused on phenomena such as globalisation and neo‐liberalism to explain contemporary education reform, the author argues that it is the discourse of fear and insecurity that now underpins educational reform.

The Making and Shaping of the Victorian Teacher

List of Figures Acknowledgements PART I: CONTEMPORARY, COMPARATIVE AND HISTORICAL CONTEXTS Making and Shaping Good Teachers: Contemporary and Historical Contexts Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives: New Cultural History Victorian Education Reform: Comparative and International Contexts PART II: DISCOURSES OF THE VICTORIAN TEACHER Discourses of Crisis and Derision: Targeting the Poor and the Teacher The Discourse of the Good Victorian Teacher: The Modern and Moral Teacher PART III: MAKING AND SHAPING THE VICTORIAN TEACHER Schools as Sites of Disciplinary Control Training Institutions as Sites of Disciplinary Control Examining and Documenting the Teacher Conclusion: Paradoxes and the Present Bibliography Index

International Service-Learning: Rethinking the Role of Emotions:

Existing research on international service-learning (ISL) only implicitly alludes to emotions or considers emotions as a limited vehicle through which the more important work of learning occurs. This study set out to shift this focus on emotions to show how emotions are an integral part of the overall ISL experience. The aim was to understand how an ISL internship was an emotional experience for the student participants through the lens of noncognitive process theory of emotions. This was a qualitative case study of the experiences of 10 university students who engaged in an ISL internship in East Africa. Data collection instruments included preinternship surveys and emotional mind maps, postinternship surveys, and interviews. The study demonstrated that ISL can be a highly charged, emotional experience for student participants. The author argues that emotional responses are not simply a limited catalyst through which learning and transformation transpires, but constitutes forms of understanding in and of themselves. This points to the need for ISL researchers and practitioners to shift their preconceptions about the value of emotions in learning and transformation processes and attend to the emotional dimensions of ISL in their research and the implementation of these programs.

Globalisation and internationalisation of teacher education: a comparative case study of Canada and Greater China

This article begins with a brief overview of the relationship between globalisation and the internationalisation of higher education. This serves as a backdrop for the focus of the article, which is the internationalisation of teacher education. In order to see the diverse ways that teacher education programmes have been internationalised over the past 15 years, a case study comparing internationalisation initiatives in Greater China and Canada is presented. This comparative case study demonstrates how different globalising processes influence various forms of internationalisation. Comparison also sheds light on the importance of attending not only to broader, global processes, but specific, local contextual factors. Rather than consider internationalisation as one set of practices that have been taken up globally, this article suggests that there are many different forms of internationalisation in teacher education that are influenced by both global and local contexts. In this respect, the study moves us towards a more nuanced and complex understanding of how teacher education institutions across diverse settings are being internationalised in the twenty-first century.

COMPARATIVE EDUCATION, POSTMODERNITY AND HISTORICAL RESEARCH: HONOURING ANCESTORS

The fi eld of comparative education has been particularly slow to get ‘past the post’ (Cowen, 1996) and actively engage with the ideas of postmodernism. 1 Over 15 years ago, Rust, who was then the President of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), commented on our reluctance to consider the implications that new feminist, postmodern and post-structural theories present for comparative education. Rust (1991) claimed that postmodernism should be a central concept in our fi eld’s discourse and called upon comparativists to defi ne more clearly the metanarratives that have driven our fi eld [and] engage in the critical task of disassembling these narratives because they defi ne what comparativists fi nd acceptable, desirable, and effi cient in education. At the same time, we must increase our attention to small narratives [and] the far-ranging Others of the world. (p. 625‐626) During the 1990s, we began to notice a tentative shift as a few creative comparativists engaged with the ideas of postmodernism. Ninnes and Burnett (2003) traced the slight increase in the number of citations of post-structural scholars in the comparative education literature during this period. Comparative education conference themes also began to refl ect an interest in ideas and concepts associated with postmodernity (e.g., CIES Western Regional Meeting, 1998; World Congress of Comparative Education

Self-Study Research in a New School of Education: Moving between vulnerability and community

This paper explores the dual and seemingly contradictory potential of self-study research to illuminate our fears, anxieties, tensions and uncertainties as teacher educators, whilst acting as a catalyst for community building. This self-study research was conducted during the founding year of a new school of education, drawing data from surveys and interviews with faculty about their own self-study research and participation in one anothers studies. Through these collective self-studies, faculty members constructed and negotiated their identities as teacher educators and as a school of education. As researchers and researched participants, the faculty of the new school of education moved during that first year between vulnerability and community, a process illuminated by their self-study research.

The Possibilities and Potential of Transnational History: A Response to Kazamias' Call for Historical Research.

This article provides background on Kazamias’ historical comparative education work. Transnational history as means to respond to Kazamias’ call to “reinvent the historical” is introduced. The article demonstrates how the logics of transnational history differ markedly from the logics of comparison and transfer. The argument advanced is in favor of educational histories of the present, informed by transnational approaches of the past, not as a complement to comparative methodologies, but as a replacement of them.