SECTION D: TEACHING AND LEARNING
Theme 9: Teacher Education
International Convenor:
Teresa Tatto (mttatto@msu.edu)
Regional Convenor:
Mohamed Souali soualimohamed@menara.ma
Local Convenor:
Radmila Jusović: radmila@coi-stepbystep.ba
THE INTENDED AND UNINTENDED EFFECTS OF EDUCATIONAL (GLOBAL) REFORM ON THE EDUCATION OF TEACHERS
Systemic educational reform movements exert an important influence on teacher education and teachers. Widespread educational reform not only seems to be caused by the intent to reorganize the educational system in many nations (e.g., decentralization) but also by a more widely-held notion of the knowledge and values that are worth teaching, and how the transmission of such knowledge and values is to be obtained and administered. World-wide reform tendencies such as privatization and decentralization have produced a growing urgency toward the engineering of standards, quality control and accountability mechanisms. Nation states and their institutions respond to these global pressures according to their own societies’ economic, political, societal, and cultural priorities. Arrangements to prepare teachers formal, informal, and non-formal are expected by the state, by teacher education institutions, by schools, and by teachers themselves to have an effect via teachers’ learning and teaching practice. Formal and informal quality control and accountability mechanisms have been created or reinforced in order to secure compliance with globally determined standards of quality via teacher learning and practice. Examples of these are the development of standards for recruiting and selecting teachers into the profession, re-designed teacher education curricula, new systems of accreditation and certification, incentives and rewards linked with performance, standards for primary and secondary education in subjects considered essential to compete in the global market, and so on. While globalization has served to opened up areas for exchange of teachers, pressures for accountability, performativity, etc. may have squeezed out important areas of teacher preparation that have allowed teachers, in the past, to mediate between system control and intercultural issues. Thus teacher preparation may become less of a force in preparing teachers to address issues related to peace and multicultural/intercultural education.
The educational reform promoted in the globalization era is legitimized by international agencies and it has become in many cases the essential tool of the state to initiate change and regulate systems that may already have in place other--more culturally relevant—arrangements.
We define the education of teachers broadly encompassing the teacher’s lifecycle. Thus teacher education includes informal and formal initiatives as well as those used to provide pre-service education and on-going professional development. Presentations should address the larger question of the intended and unintended effects of educational (global) reform on the education of teachers, as it relates to one or more of the following:
- The context, policy and politics of teacher education (e.g., who controls teacher education? What is the impact of globalization on local teacher education systems and traditions? What is the role of international agencies? What is the role of the state? What is the role of quality assurance mechanisms, standards, competencies, and the “new” accountability?)
- The institutions and organization of teacher education (e.g., what are key changes in the institutions of teacher education, how do institutions shape how teachers learn, who is taught to teach, who teaches teachers?)
- The construction of the curriculum and experiences in teacher education (e.g., what norms regulate the pedagogy teachers are taught? what assumptions govern the subject content teachers are expected to teach? how are teachers expected to learn to teach diverse or marginalized populations?)
- The shifting and contested notions of the teacher and of teaching practices across schooling contexts and their resonance for teacher education (e.g., how does teacher education address the teaching of themes related to living together?)
Authors are welcomed to propose others sub-topics as long as they justify how these address important current issues related to the education of teachers.
Theme 10: Educating Professionals
International Convenor: Heribert Hinzen (hinzen@iiz-dvv.de)
Regional Convenor: Peter Mayo (peter.mayo@um.edu.mt)
Local Convenor: Katarina Popović ( iizdvv@sbb.coyu)
NOTE: DETAILS FORTHCOMING
Theme 11: Indigenous Learning
International Convenor:
Douglas Morgan (Douglas.Morgan@unisa.edu.au)
Regional Convenor: Faten Adly (adlyfatena@hotmail.com)
Local Convenor: Sofija Vrrcelj (svrcelj@ffri.hr)
1. Critical Reflections: Incorporating Indigenous knowledges in educational pedagogy
- Where does ‘lay knowledge’ (Indigenous identity, customary practice, creation accounts, myths and legends) fit
- Accommodating different, competing or conflicting epistemologies in educational practice
2. Indigenous Participation in Formal Education: Mediating factors
- What assists participation
- Why and how does it work
3. Evaluation of Educational Tools: Effectiveness
- What works, how and why
4. Future Directions in Indigenous Education: What is the ‘Big’ Picture (policy directions etc.)
- What should be valued
- What will make a difference to Indigenous Peoples’ educational outcomes
- What is best practice
- Where do we go from here
Theme 12:
Learning in and out of classrooms:
Possibilities, Realities, Prospects, Comparative Perspectives
International Convenor:
Shin’ichi Suzuki (suzukishinichi9@msn.com)
Regional Convenor:
Devorah Kalekin Fishman (Israel.dkalekin@construct.haifa.ac.il)
Local Convenor:
Amir Pušina ( pusinaamir@yahoo.com)
The emergence of ubiquitous learning spheres is observed world-wide. This phenomenon is the outcome of advances in information sciences and technological industrialization. It reflects the vast scale of the advancement of learning in the last century. Advanced learning, including most branches of human knowledge, has affected many dimensions of human life, with revolutionary shifts in communication. Education cannot be left untouched.
On the other hand, human livelihood has become internationalized and interdependent. Ways of living, regardless of language difference, are now inter-regional, inter-ethnic, inter-religious, inter-cultural and inter-national. Migration, for example, accelerates such shifts.. The situation as such requires a new type of education beyond national state-boundaries.
In 1996, UNESCO published a report prepared by the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century: Learning: The Treasure Within. The Report suggests four pillars of learning; (1) learning to know, (2) learning to do, (3) learning to live together, and (4) learning to be. It emphasizes the importance of spontaneous individual and collective learning.
Within and against globalized living spheres, “Learning in and out of Classrooms” is essential and inevitable for all children, young people, and adults. We have already observed various practices from pedagogical experiments, construction of learning-sites, development of learning transfer, and so forth. However, some topics deserve to be studied further using a comparative perspective, including:
- Literacy: different types of literacy, including e-literacy, graphic arts, music(s) and body language
- Learning communities: school and school- centred learning spaces, historical vs. modern learning communities, community learning spaces (neighbourhoods, villages, small towns, alternatives
- Rights to Learning: equal opportunities, exclusion or segregation ( by gender, ethnicity, religion, ability) vs. inclusion, migrant minority vs. settled majority
- Cultures of Learning: ‘child-centred’ vs. ‘subject-centred’, ‘ability-selective’ vs. ‘disability-affirmative’, new literati,’ ‘beyond two cultures’
- Knowledge & ideologies of Learning: European vs. non-European knowledge, indigenous vs. universal, ‘multiple cosmologies’, gender biased vs. gender-free studies
- Life-Stages: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, ‘the third age’; ways of groups meeting from different life stages
- Policy-Choices: provisions for learning, welfare for the learners, learning facilitators; who decides curricula, and their ideological underpinnings.
- Development and Learning: human development, qualifications, knowledge and skills, assessment and accreditation
- Confluent Education and Learning : How to learn/teach multi-dimensionally-the creative integration of cognitive, affective and behavioral dimensions of learning/teaching
- Cross-cultural and Trans-cultural perspective of Confluent education/learning
- Learning/Ability Theories and Confluent Education
