Being a Teacher

Teaching and Learning in a Global Context

Lucy Cooker, Tony Cotton, Helen Toft

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315463155
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Sharing the stories of educators working in a diverse range of international contexts, Being a Teacher uses personal narratives to explore effective teaching and learning in global settings. Demonstrating how personal values influence pedagogical practice, and asking how practice can be improved, authors reflect on their experiences not just as teachers, but also as learners, to offer essential guidance for all prospective educational professionals.

The book focuses on teacher narratives as a vehicle for consideration of teacher professionalism, and as a way of understanding issues which are important to teachers in different contexts. By sharing and analysing these narratives, the book discusses the increasing complexity of teaching as a profession, and considers the commonality within the narratives. Each chapter includes graphic representations of analysis and encourages its reader to reflect critically on central questions, thereby constructing their own narrative.

Being a Teacher provides an in-depth and engaging insight into the education system at a global level, making it an essential read for anyone embarking on a teaching career within the international education market.

Part 1
Introductions

Chapter 1
Introduction

We described in the preface how this book grew out of our shared experience teaching on the PGCEi, a qualification for teachers in international schools. Many of the participants on this course have come to teaching as a way of funding their travels or, once they have found a place to settle in, or a person to settle with, they have taken to teaching as a way of supporting their new family life. This is not to say that teaching is entirely functional for them, is simply a way of making money; on the contrary many participants have started in language support or teaching English as a second language and realised that teaching is the job for them.

One of the many joys of working with these participants is that there is no common shared experience of education systems or assumed norms of pedagogical approaches. For example, the group of participants Tony is currently working with attended school in seven different countries and are teaching in five different countries. This diversity of experience brings a richness to the discussions that does not often appear in UK-based courses which tend to have a much more homogenous group of participants.

There is one shared understanding among the participants on the PGCEi and this is that a teaching qualification is a licence to travel. For them, teaching has become a truly global profession.

Teaching as a global profession

Teaching now transcends geographical barriers. As you read the book you will explore in detail one fascinating example of this: a school that literally transcends national barriers by relocating to a new country every term. THINK Global School combines what is described as a high-quality curriculum with world travel. This year the students will attend a school located in Peru for the first term of the year before relocating to Morocco for the second term and finishing the academic year in Canada. The school website describes life for the students in the following way:

At THINK Global School, the diversity of your meals is the perfect metaphor for student life. While no two days are quite the same, you can always count on being part of a small, close-knit community devoted to supporting and nurturing each other through the experience of attending high school abroad. Along the way you’ll travel the globe, live like locals, and share your experiences with friends old and new. It’s a revolutionary system of living and learning where no moment goes un-savored and your education comes alive in the everyday.

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It takes a particular type of teacher to work in this way. J. will describe his life and work in detail throughout the book but imagine having the flexibility to teach in a new country every term and having to find ways to connect your teaching to the specifics of the new environment you find yourself in; the new set of authors and artists you can connect with and the new scientific and mathematical cultures that you can draw on in your lessons. It is no wonder that the website sees those who are ‘lean-forward learners who never stop asking questions’ as potential teachers.

While THINK Global School is an extreme example of the global nature of teaching and learning many schools in the UK are examples of the shrinking global world in which we live. Data from the Department of Education suggests that over 300 languages are spoken in schools in the UK. The demographic make-up of many schools has changed considerably over the last decade to reflect the increasingly diverse society in which we live.

But although teaching has become a global profession and schools are having to develop to serve a more diverse range of learners learning has not become a global right.

The movement of people around the world is at its greatest reported level. At the time of writing it is estimated that 65 million people have been displaced from their homes. This is just under 1 per cent of the world’s population. It is also the equivalent of the whole population of the UK being on the move. As many as 21.3 million of these displaced persons are refugees escaping persecution or running for their lives from war that has engulfed them and their families.

Table 1.1 Current provision of education globally

	Low-income countries	Middle-income countries	High-income countries
Will not learn basic primary level skills	69%	21%	8%
Will learn only basic primary level skills	23%	30%	22%
Will learn minimum secondary level skills	8%	49%	70%

Source: Education Commission projections (2016).

A report from the Global Education Commission entitled The Learning Generation: Investing in Education for a Changing World offers an analysis in Table 1.1 of the current state of global education.

The report suggests that £23 billion is required to ensure all children have access to primary and secondary education by 2030. Their global education plan has the following set of objectives:

• Quality preschool education is accessible for all children.

• All girls and boys will complete primary school and all ten-year-olds will have functional literacy and numeracy skills.

• The proportion of girls and boys achieving secondary level skills in low-income countries will reach levels current in high-income countries.

• Participation in post-secondary learning in low-income countries will be close to the levels seen today in high-income countries.

• Inequalities in participation and learning between the richest and poorest children within countries will be sharply reduced, coupled with strong progress in reducing other forms of inequality.

This aim for full access to primary and secondary education for all updates and develops the Millennium Goal for education. Target 2A is that the world should aim to achieve universal primary education and that by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.

Since this target was set there have been improvements in the educational experience for many children. For example:

• Enrolment in primary education in developing regions reached 91 per cent in 2015, up from 83 per cent in 2000.

• Among youth aged 15 to 24, the literacy rate improved globally from 83 per cent to 91 per cent between 1990 and 2015 and the gap between women and men has narrowed.

However, there is still a considerable distance to travel before these aims can be seen to have been fully met. For example:

• In 2015, 57 million children of primary school age were out of school.

• In the developing regions, children in the poorest households are four times as likely to be out of school as those in the richest households.

• In countries affected by conflict, the proportion of out-of-school children increased from 30 per cent in 1999 to 36 per cent in 2012.

(Data retrieved from www­.un­.or­g/m­ill­enn­ium­goa­ls)

While the focus of this book is the stories of teachers around the world we should not forget that tied up in teachers’ stories are learners’ stories. One of the aspirations for all those engaged in international teacher education is that a teaching workforce with an understanding of the global impact of education can become change agents to work for a more equitable experience of education around the world. Only global educators can make the Millennium target 2A a reality.

Teaching is a global profession and teachers around the world have stories to tell and connections to make. These connections can serve to make us all more effective teachers and can support us in our quest to develop an education system which all children can access and which is a first step in creating a more equal and just global society.

The development of international schools

A recent report by the International Schools Consultancy (ISC) suggests that the number of international kindergarten-to-Grade-12 schools has increased by over 40 per cent in the last five years. They estimate the current total number of such international schools to be 8,257 attended by over 4.3 million pupils. The largest increase has been in Asia (including Western Asia and the Middle East) with a 55.7 per cent growth in the number of students.

This would suggest that more families are choosing to pay to send their children to international schools to learn through the medium of English as this will allow their children access to globally recognised qualifications whether this be the International Baccalaureate, qualifications gained through the Cambridge International Examinations organisation or the Scholastic Assessment Tests (SATs) and the American College Testing (ACT) from the United States. It also suggests that western pedagogical approaches may be becoming favoured by some groups of parents.

While this growth of international schools continues local national curricula will become influenced by the curriculum adopted by the international schools and by the pedagogical approaches that they espouse. International schools are seen as high-status institutions even though the quality and standards in such schools can vary widely. International schools are no longer the home for children of ex-pats, diplomats and government officials exclusively but attract an increasing number of ‘host country nationals’ (students who are from the country in which the school is located).

This growth of international schools has been followed by an expansion of university-based teacher education provision internationally. The course based at the University of Nottingham out of which this book grew now runs in 15 locations around the world. It has nearly 1,000 students currently on the programme, which makes it the biggest teacher education course in the university.

Over the last 20 years, teacher education has become increasingly professionalised and now regards itself as a rigorous academic discipline with a long history of research and development. This has led to an increased global understanding of the issues and problems within education and teacher education and a shared commitment to engaging with the difficult questions that are thrown up by learning and teaching across the world. The American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual conference in 2016 was attended by nearly 16,000 delegates and the AERA President, Joyce E. King, discussed the universal human right to education and the moral obligation of educators and educational researchers to work for the benefit of oppressed groups around the world.

This increasing globalisation of teacher education means that aims and beliefs of the curricula emanating from the UK, the United States and Australia are becoming increasingly close.

Aims and beliefs of international curricula

A programme which is followed in over 4,500 international schools is the International Baccalaureate (IB). The IB was founded in 1968 although the current programme was developed from a framework laid down by Marie-Therese Maurette who worked in the international school in Geneva. She published her framework in a 1948 UNESCO booklet Educational Techniques for Peace. Do They Exist? In terms of a shared purpose for global education this seems like an appropriate starting point. The current IB mission states that their aim is to ‘create a better world through education’. One of the ways that the curriculum on offer in IB schools works towards this aim is to ask all teachers in all lessons to develop a set of skills and attributes in their learners. These skills and attributes are listed as a set of learner profiles. This learner profile states that all students in IB schools should become:

• Inquirers through developing their natural curiosity.

• Knowledgeable through exploring concepts that have local and global significance.

• Thinkers exercising initiative in thinking critically and creatively.

• Communicators who understand and express ideas and information confidently.

• Principled – acting with integrity and honesty.

• Open-minded – understanding their own cultures and personal histories.

• Caring – showing empathy, compassion and respect to the needs and feelings of others.

• Risk-takers approaching unfamiliar situations and uncertainties with courage and forethought.

• Balanced – understanding the importance of intellectual, physical and emotional balance.

• Reflective – giving thoughtful consideration to their own learning and experience.

To conclude the book we will develop a set of teacher competencies which we argue will support the development of a global education system acting for social justice. Before that point, it may be worth pausing for a moment and reflecting for yourself.

In contrast to the far-reaching and international aim of the IB programme the UK National Curriculum introduced in 2014 has the stated aim that the national curriculum should provide pupils with ‘an introduction to the essential knowledge that they need to be educated citizens’. This rather modest aim, that the curriculum is only an introduction, continues to state that the curriculum ‘introduces pupils to the best that has been thought and said; and helps engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement’.

This statement of aims raises several questions. What knowledge is ‘essential’, indeed how might we define an ‘educated citizen’? Or are the two ideas directly linked? An educated citizen is one who has all the essential knowledge necessary and vice-versa. For a global educator the statement is disappointing as it perhaps suggests education is seen purely in terms of knowledge and of passing on knowledge in the hope that it may help pupils come to an appreciation of creativity. This aim stands in stark contrast to the aims of the IB curriculum discussed earlier and suggests that the UK curriculum may not be as influential on the international stage as it once was.

An interim report for The Primary Review undertaken for Cambridge University by Maha Shuayb and Sharon O’Donnell, Aims and Values in Primary Education: England and Other Countries, describes the ways in which the curricula in six countries have developed over the last 40 years. They notice a tension between two ideas, child-centred education, and social and economic progress within the country. We would argue that this latter point has become emphasised in recent years through the growth of international comparative testing. The conclusions in the report suggest that child-centred philosophies were particularly clear in the 1960s and 1970s in England, Scotland and New Zealand but that optimism that education might b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part 1 Introductions
• Part 2 Our experiences as learners
• Part 3 Our experiences as teachers
• Part 4 Visions for education
• References
• Index