Thinking and Acting Across Ponds: Glocalized* Intersections of Trepidation, Neoliberalism, and Possibilities for 21st Century Teacher Education

By Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner, Renee P. Desmarchelier, David Gerlach, Peter Wiens, PG Schrader, Barry Down, Lindsay Stewart, Michaela Stone, Nigel Bagnall, Mareen Lüke | May 26, 2020
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(*Glocal – a portmanteau word bridging global + local)

Abstract: This article draws upon the cross-continental experiences of teacher educators in Australia, Germany, and the United States to contextualize and connect localized experiences in each country in the education and training of teachers as glocal phenomena. Through a glocal lens, the paper suggests that the dynamics working against the successful education and training of teachers are multifaceted, locally significant, and globally consistent. Two relevant areas are considered, resonating in both the local contexts of the authors and in their global reach, connectivity, and consistency: 1) internal university resistance and fighting over funding, status, and role and 2) over-reliance on market economies that depend on cheap labor fueled by nationalism, neoliberalism, and xenophobia. The authors address issues related to enrollment, reduction, and accreditation within university-based teacher education and training programs as particular areas of common complexity before yielding to discussion of the effects of those concerns situated within neoliberalism and neo-nationalism. The glocalized analysis and critical approach taken by the authors serve as foils to combat the negative scenario that encapsulates the education and training of teachers. Finally, questions are framed to help readers join in the broader discussion in their particular contexts, extending the capacity for democratic dialogue.
Keywords: glocality, teacher education, neoliberalism, educational reform, comparative education, free market, teacher education and training, higher education

摘要 (Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner, Renee P. Desmarchelier, David Gerlach, Peter Wiens, PG Schrader, Barry Down, Lindsay Stewart, Michaela Stone, Nigel Bagnal, & Mareen Lüke)：本文以澳大利亚，德国和美国的跨大陆教师们的经验做为基础，把各国在教师培训和再培训方面的当地经验与全球现象结合起来。通过一个全球性的（同时也是地区性的）视角认识到，阻碍成功培训和再培训的动因是复杂的，它在当地具有重要意义，且在全球范围内是固有的。有两个相关领域在作者的当地背景及其全球影响力，网络和一致性方面引起了共鸣：1）大学内部的阻力以及对资金，地位和作用的斗争 2）过度依赖由廉价劳动力而决定的，并伴随着民族主义，新自由主义和仇外心理的市场经济。作者们将那些与大学的教师培训及培训计划中的入学，减少和认证的相关问题视为共同复杂性中的一个特殊领域。之后，他们侧重于在新自由主义和新民族主义中那些固定关注点所产生的影响的讨论。作者们的本地化分析和批判性方法可以视为一个幻灯片，用以抵抗那些围绕教师培训和再培训的负面情况。最后，所提出的问题有助于读者在各自的背景下参与更加广泛的讨论，从而提升他们进行民主对话的能力。
关键词：全球地区性，师资培训，新自由主义，教育改革，比较教育，自由市场， 高等教育。

摘要 (Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner, Renee P. Desmarchelier, David Gerlach, Peter Wiens, PG Schrader, Barry Down, Lindsay Stewart, Michaela Stone, Nigel Bagnal, & Mareen Lüke)：本文以澳大利亞，德國和美國的跨大陸教師們的經驗做為基礎，把各國在教師培訓和再培訓方面的當地經驗與全球現象結合起來。通過一個全球性的（同時也是地區性的）視角認識到，阻礙成功培訓和再培訓的動因是複雜的，它在當地具有重要意義，且在全球範圍內是固有的。有兩個相關領域在作者的當地背景及其全球影響力，網絡和一致性方面引起了共鳴：1）大學內部的阻力以及對資金，地位和作用的鬥爭 2）過度依賴由廉價勞動力而決定的，並伴隨著民族主義，新自由主義和仇外心理的市場經濟。作者們將那些與大學的教師培訓及培訓計劃中的入學，減少和認證的相關問題視為共同複雜性中的一個特殊領域。之後，他們側重於在新自由主義和新民族主義中那些固定關注點所產生的影響的討論。作者們的本地化分析和批判性方法可以視為一個幻燈片，用以抵抗那些圍繞教師培訓和再培訓的負面情況。最後，所提出的問題有助於讀者在各自的背景下參與更加廣泛的討論，從而提升他們進行民主對話的能
關鍵詞：全球地區性，師資培訓，新自由主義，教育改革，比較教育，自由市場， 高等教育

Zusammenfassung (Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner, Renee P. Desmarchelier, David Gerlach, Peter Wiens, PG Schrader, Barry Down, Lindsay Stewart, Michaela Stone, Nigel Bagnal, & Mareen Lüke: Über Teiche hinweg denken und handeln: Glokalisierte Schnittpunkte von Beklemmung, Neoliberalismus und Möglichkeiten der Lehrerbildung im 21. Jahrhundert): Dieser Artikel stützt sich auf die kontinentübergreifenden Erfahrungen von Lehrerinnen und Lehrern in Australien, Deutschland und den Vereinigten Staaten. Die lokalen Erfahrungen in den einzelnen Ländern bei der Aus- und Weiterbildung von Lehrkräften werden mit globalen Phänomenen kontextualisiert. Durch eine glokale (globale und zugleich lokale) Linse wird erkannt, dass die Dynamiken, die einer erfolgreichen Aus- und Weiterbildung entgegenwirken, vielschichtig, lokal bedeutsam und global konsistent sind. Es werden zwei relevante Bereiche betrachtet, die sowohl in den lokalen Kontexten der Autoren als auch in ihrer globalen Reichweite, Vernetzung und Konsistenz mitschwingen: 1) der universitätsinterne Widerstand und Kampf um Finanzierung, Status und Rolle und 2) die übermäßige Abhängigkeit von Marktwirtschaften, die von billigen Arbeitskräften abhängen, und die durch Nationalismus, Neoliberalismus und Fremdenfeindlichkeit begleitet werden. Die Autoren behandeln Fragen im Zusammenhang mit der Immatrikulation, Reduzierung und Akkreditierung in universitären Aus- und -Fortbildungsprogrammen für Lehrerinnen und Lehrer als besondere Bereiche von gemeinsamer Komplexität. Danach betrachten sie die Diskussion über die Auswirkungen dieser im Neoliberalismus und Neonationalismus verankerten Anliegen. Die glokalisierte Analyse und der kritische Ansatz der Autoren dienen als Folie zur Bekämpfung des negativen Szenarios, das die Aus- und Weiterbildung von Lehrkräften umgibt. Schließlich werden Fragen formuliert, die den Lesern helfen sollen, sich an der breiteren Diskussion in ihren jeweiligen Kontexten zu beteiligen und so die Fähigkeit zum demokratischen Dialog zu erweitern.
Schlüsselwörter: Glokalität, LehrerInnenausbildung, Neoliberalismus, Bildungsreform, vergleichende Bildung, freier Markt, Hochschulbildung

Резюме(Кеннет Й. Фашинг-Варнер, Рении П. Десмаршелье, Давид Герлах, Петер Винс, ПГ Шрадер, Бэрри Даун, Линдсей Стюарт, Микаэла Стоун, Найджел Багнал, Марин Люке: Думать и действовать через пруды: Глокализованные пересечения тревоги, неолиберализма и возможностей подготовки учителей в 21 веке): В данной статье в трансконтинентальной проекции изучается опыт педагогов из Австралии, Германии и Соединенных Штатов Америки, чтобы выявить национальные особенности в профессиональной подготовке и переподготовке преподавателей. Опыт, полученный в разных странах, соотносится и соизмеряется на фоне глобальных феноменов. Статья, в которой сама проблематика рассматривается через призму глокализации (т. е. с перспективой профилирования регионального отклика на процессы глобализации), показывает, что тенденции, которые препятствуют успешной подготовке и переподготовке специалистов, являются многоуровневыми; степень их релевантности национально-маркирована, но по содержательному наполнению они в разных странах имеют много общего. Рассматриваются две значимые области, которые соприкасаются как в локальных контекстах авторов, так в глобальном радиусе действия, структурообразования и соотнесенности: 1) внутреннее, университетское сопротивление и борьба за финансирование, статус и распределение ролей; 2) чрезмерная зависимость от рыночных экономик, которые ориентированы на дешевую рабочую силу и страдают от национализма, неолиберализма и ксенофобии. Авторы рассматривают сопутствующие вопросы, возникающие в процессе подготовки и переподготовки преподавателей в университетских программах – зачисление, восстановление, аттестация как особые сферы, обладающие общим уровнем сложности. Далее обращается внимание на имеющие место дискуссии о последствиях проблем, спровоцированных неолиберализмом и неонационализмом. Предпринятый авторами критический глокализационный анализ может служить своего рода защитной пленкой, с помощью которой подавляются те негативные сценарии, которые сопровождают профессиональную подготовку и переподготовку педагогов. В заключение формулируются вопросы, которые призваны помочь читателям включиться в широкое обсуждение проблематики в разных контекстах и тем самым стимулировать их к осуществлению демократического диалога.
Ключевые слова: глокализация, профессиональная подготовка учителей, неолиберализм, реформа образования, сравнительный анализ образовательных дискурсов, свободный рынок, высшее образование

More than 15 years ago, Reid and O’Donoghue (2004) articulated trepidation about teacher education and training; this article expounds their concerns in contemporary educational contexts, drawing on the authors’ experiences in Australia, Germany, and the United States within frames of the education, the training and the vocational engagement of pre-service and in-service teachers. The authors of this work are colleagues within the field of teacher education on three different continents; each discovered that what we frame as local concerns are better framed as glocal phenomena, ones in which our perceived hyper-localized concerns are also locally relevant to our global counterparts. Further, these concerns are globally connected across contexts. Like Meyrowitz (2005), we recognize that “all experience is local…[and] the localness of experience is a constant” (p. 21), but we accept this in the context that ideas and information are distributed “with and about people who live in local-ties different from our own [and also that] we more frequently intercept experiences and messages originally shaped for, and limited to, people in other places” (p. 23). “The similarity of demands, coordination of mobilization, and clustering of policy outcomes across countries with varying political and cultural conditions” is locally extant, globally relevant, and of mutual import (Barrett, & Kurzman, 2004, p. 487-488).

Erickson (2002) characterized glocality as “global phenomena more often than not could be studied in their local expressions…[and that] cultural globalization has always [been] tantamount to glocalisation (…) creative fusions of [the] local and non-local” (p. 166-167). This perspective directly informs our work and we argue from this glocal standpoint that the dynamics working against the vocational education and training of teachers are multifaceted, locally significant, and globally consistent. We will discuss two relevant areas, resonating individually in our local contexts yet suggesting global reach and consistency. They are: 1) internal university resistance and fighting over funding, status, and role, and 2) over-reliance on market economies that depend on cheap labor fueled by nationalism, neoliberalism, and xenophobia. A glocal analysis and critical approach may serve as foils to combat this negative scenario. This contribution ends, consequently, by framing questions to help readers join in the broader discussion in their particular contexts.

Cross-Continental Glocal Challenges in Teacher Education and Training

For more than 60 years, universities and university teacher-based education and training programs around the world have faced and continue to face internal challenges that could be identified by the acronym ERA: Enrollments, Reduction, and Accreditation (Kaiser, 2012; Vaugh, 2002; Young, 1979; Patillo, 1960; Eaton, 2010; Seldon, 1960; Hoffman, 2013; Ansell, 2008). Overall, our contexts include comprehensive universities that are facing declining or static enrolments; we focus on universities with enrolment declines relative to traditional students pursuing teaching degrees. We hear with great frequency from our students that they are often led to perceive teaching as a lesser profession and are pressured to pursue other majors. Jane (pseudonym) is a representative example from the Australian context. In Australia, students in secondary school achieve an Overall Position (OP) score that informs what programs a student can be accepted into for university study, based on subject achievement relative to the performance of peers. Jane’s OP was a 1, the highest level one can achieve, and would have qualified her for nearly anything she wanted to study. Jane came from a family of teachers, had always wanted to be a teacher, and was eager to enter an Australian university’s teacher education and training program with that desired major. Jane was placed under a considerable amount of pressure from teachers in her high school as well as the school’s guidance officers to pursue a profession that would be considered of higher status and higher pay than teaching, such as medicine or law. Peers who questioned why someone smart who could study anything would pursue teaching magnified this pressure. Jane’s constant response was one of resistance to this pressure, and Jane asked a group of teachers and peers at one point, “Don’t we want smart teachers?” While Jane persisted in following a teaching course, many students succumb to the pressure to find more economically promising careers. A similar phenomenon has happened in the United States despite both contexts experiencing high demand for teachers (Aragon, 2016; Cowan, Goldhaber, Hayes, & Theobald, 2016; Kearney, 2014; Mason, & Matas, 2015), particularly in areas where marginalized groups of K-12 students are educated. Many university students simply choose other careers to respond to family, peer, and teacher/school pressure imposed on them, leading to declining teacher enrollments, and this phenomenon is not new. In the late 1980’s Harvard Professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot highlighted this trend, particularly the pressure placed on female students who make up a vast majority of students pursuing education (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1988). In Lawrence-Lightfoot’s (1988) Bill Moyers’ World of Ideas television interview, she said:

For the most part I think teachers are denigrated, that given a chance, women who now have the choice of what they want to do are unlikely — I mean, who are highly educated, who have high status, who are privileged, are unlikely now to go into teaching. For example, they are choosing business or law or medicine or any of those now opening-up fields that used to be the province solely of males.

While Lawrence-Lightfoot shared these remarks over 30 years ago, they remain true today. Since 1988, however, the pressure is not solely based on the perception of teaching as lesser, the pressure is now exacerbated by the free market, neoliberalism, and educational reform.

Although teacher education in Germany still relies heavily on state-owned structures, universities are faced with high numbers of enrolments of pre-service teachers who generally study two subjects plus educational sciences. Later, these teachers will be employed in a school system that has used to, since its inception in the 18th century, differentiate among social classes: Hauptschule used to address the working class, Realschule focused on future citizenzs working in (higher) offices, and Gymnasium that prepares students for universities. In general, the German educational system has become more flexible and permeable. However, with new school types (e.g. comprehensive schools) in some German states, it is widely agreed that the traditionally lower strands (Hauptschule and Realschule) tend to reproduce inequalities within the educational system and German society. As a result, children from poor families have a higher risk of being left behind despite attending a Gymnasium school culture. Teacher education programs are still structured according to these school types; these programs include more pedagogical aspects for lower-school types and more content knowledge for the Gymnasium candidates. The Gymnasium teacher degree is highly sought by those generally wishing to avoid challenges associated with negative student behaviors and learners with more specialized needs. Job placement, especially for those wanting to teach in the more elite Gymnasium, depends heavily on a second phase of teacher training after earning a university degree. In this phase, teacher candidates already work part-time at a school while remaining students within the state-run teacher training institutions (Munderloh, 2018). In the second phase, teacher candidates are dependent on the teacher educators who evaluate their work and their own prior beliefs of good teaching, although these beliefs are not necessarily based on any accepted standards. This practice works to homogenize future teachers by implementing the normative expectations of the tiered school system and traditional practices of teaching (Wernet 2006; Dzengel, Kunze, & Wernet, 2012). Said another way, compliance with the traditions and values held by these teacher educators directly impact how candidates navigate their employment. Through these structures, both schools and the system of teacher education reinforce themselves, becoming insularly resistant to innovation and change.

In the Australian context, modified delivery modes have been used to compensate for declining physical presence of students, and to cater to students for whom greater flexibility is believed to be attractive. In the US context, education class sizes have risen. This increase is due to combining populations of traditional undergraduate students in education with a semi-parallel group of non-traditional students who are pursuing alternative routes to licensure (ARL). Traditional and non-traditional students report significant disconnects with peers based on the route to licensure being pursued (Redding, & Smith, 2016, p. 1095). John (pseudonym) and Sarah (pseudonym) are two illustrative examples from the US context. John began his undergraduate teacher preparation program immediately following graduation from high school. He articulated feeling less supported over time in his program as class sizes increased and more and more of his classes were taught by adjunct professors; the same is true of ‘sessional’ and ‘casual’ instructors in Australia, and in the German context, much of the training is farmed out post-degree to non-university-based educators serving in supervisory but not necessarily pedagogical roles.

John was passionate about teaching but continued to experience a disconnect in his education and training as he was forced into larger classes or classes with people who expressed different needs from a traditional undergraduate population.

Ultimately, he switched majors in part citing that the lack of support wore him out, particularly since he perceived that education would be the major most apt to support students. John shared [his feelings]: “at the end of the day, it just didn’t work for me. My professors, more and more, were not the real professors and the classes kept getting bigger and bigger to accommodate all these older people and they always seemed to look down on us and tell us what we didn’t know because we didn’t have as much time on the planet as them. Why would I want to have my parents pay tuition money to feel mistreated?”

On the other hand, Sarah was an accountant who decided in her mid-40s to pursue teaching. Initially, she enrolled in a university-based alternative program but found that many of her classes were shared with 18-20-year-olds; this group of students largely did not share her life or labor experiences. From her perspective, Sarah found that she could never fully capitalize on her strengths; at the same time, her specific needs were never addressed. Sarah resigned from the university-based program. Instead, she pursued a 3-week summer education and training program where she was given her own classroom to complete her field requirements and receive her licensure — a so-called alternative pathway to licensure (alternative license). John and Sarah’s experiences are not unique. Alternative license students, in particular, who have had different undergraduate majors as well as more life and career experience, often seek programs that place the least demands on their time and combine the lowest cost with flexibility and speed.

Alternative arrangements put a greater financial strain on institutions of higher education; universities see fewer new candidates pursuing teaching as a result. Unfortunately, this tension forces institutions to development unique learning arrangements that do are not necessarily able to best meet the needs of inherently different pre-service teacher populations. To save costs, universities across contexts rely essentially on the free, or poorly-compensated, labor of mentor teachers. This arrangement signals that the induction phase of a pre-service teacher is likely to be completed with a teacher for whom this extra responsibility is uncompensated and in addition to already taxing responsibilities to their school students. This is especially true in urban and rural settings where marginalized and historically underrepresented young people live.

Betty (Australian) and Josephine (US) are examples of mentor teachers who felt the strain of the pressure to accept and mentor new teachers with the economic insult of no or little pay. Coupled with some personal struggles, Betty felt overwhelmed by her day-to-day classroom responsibilities. Her principal and the university-based education and training program put heavy pressure on Betty to accept an in-school practice student, or pre-service teacher. Betty had no information about whom she was to mentor and felt forced to accept. The student she received required significant intervention; they were not well prepared for the classroom. Exacerbated by Betty’s personal circumstances, the student received poor scores and was not supported, guided, or inducted into better practice. Similarly, Josephine was offered US$200 for supporting a student teacher for 15 weeks, which was to take place during the high-pressure spring testing semester. After this experience, Josephine told the university that supporting her mentee involved well over 240 hours of additional time beyond her normal school responsibilities; compensation for her work of inducting a pre-service teacher into the profession totaled about $0.83 an hour, less than the compensation of most US prisoners for their ‘required labor.’ The university was devastated when working through this information with Josephine.

Declining enrolment, less funding and tuition, and decreasing public (federal or state) support means that the money for adequate compensation is not readily available or easily accessible. We argue that money obviously exists, but how it is earmarked and restricted and the financial picture of most universities means that the money needed never materializes. But, the needs and obligations to provide mentor teachers is still mandated by the licensure requirements of the state where Josephine lived, for example, and is true for counterparts in Australia and Germany.

In Germany, the supervision of those in school-based practice is outsourced to pedagogical others who are not part of the university education and training landscape. These pedagogical others often represent disconnects between the knowledge taught in education and training and the demands met in the actual classroom (Gerlach, 2020); the mediation of the disconnects is itself disconnected. In Australia, the ‘practice’ experience is handled in a variety of ways, none of which compensate faculty or adjuncts for the work and time put into supporting the student. The unfunded mandates of supporting teachers in the field in an economically complex environment presents a nearly insurmountable challenge for university-based education and training programs. On the other hand, in alternative pathways to licensure, programs are only involved in a limited training phase that often does not require compensated mentorship. In those arrangements, these pre-service teachers are given classrooms and compensated as teachers while completing their school practice, student teaching, or field-based requirements. Situations like these make it even harder for universities to compete.

Finally, universities worldwide face increasing demands made by external evaluators as part of accreditation processes. The processes often ask institutions to provide copious documentation and evidence including syllabi, measures of student and faculty performance, physical copies of assessments and resultant data, strategic plans, and credentials of all personnel involved in teacher education and training. This includes the already over-taxed mentor teachers. Further, these programs are asked to provide access to interviews and to interact with the various stakeholders during onsite visits. In all three national contexts, and within sub-contexts of each country represented in this article, we have all committed a significant amount of professional time, stolen from our teaching and scholarship and allocated toward, addressing, responding to, and engaging with accreditation processes.

On its face value, accreditation is not inherently problematic; but the accreditation process imposes a burden of time, requires resources, and demands involvement that detracts from the principle enterprise of educating pre-service teachers. In our experiences, the accreditation process consumes a disproportionate amount of faculty and administrative effort relative to how it may serve to enhance the program. At times, the process of accreditation also seems to advocate change for change’s sake without attending to what change means and “without some explanation of how change happens, or not, there will be a mismatch between the stated policy goals (rhetoric) and implementation and outcomes (reality)” with regard to accreditation (Down & Sullivan, 2019, p. 45). Over time, these efforts and energies continue to increase as accreditation organizations and bodies require more and more of faculty members and administrators. Relative to the day-to-day business of their university, both faculty members and administrators are doing increasingly more with fewer resources in contexts that feel progressively more based in external surveillance of the work rather than establishing a supportive and reflectively engaging process of continuous improvement.

Neoliberalism and Neonationalism

Since the early 1980s, the idea of neo-liberalism has significantly impacted the global landscape. Tied to Reagan and Thatcher-era economic models in the Americas (MacDonald, & Ruckert, 2009; Puiggrós, 2019; Arnove, Ranz, & Torres, 2013), Europe (Arriazu Muñoz 2015; Birch, & Mykhenko, 2009), and Australia (Davies, & Bansel, 2007; Beeson, & Firth, 1998; Rea, 2016), each ensuing decade has sent more of the public sector to the private sector for support, funding, and basic-level existence. In education, across our contexts, from public primary/elementary and secondary schooling through tertiary education, the government as a public entity has expressed and demonstrated proportionally less financial commitment to the enterprise of education (Lipmann, 2013; Olssen, 2004; Robertson, 2008). Educational reformistas have particularly and significantly profited (Fasching-Varner, & Mitchell, 2013; Fasching-Varner, Mitchell, Martin, & Bennet-Haron, 2014). One need not look too deep or carefully to see the ways in which powerful private lobbies’ connections to governments from both sides of the political spectrum influence decisions on curriculum, reform, and the resultant financial investment in schools, the choice of materials, access to learning environments, and even the vocational preparation of teachers, which, as we referenced earlier, has become more market-driven and influenced by non-public education and training corporations (Giroux, 2019; Liou, Leigh, Rotheram-Fuller, & Cutler, 2019). In the US, the ‘charter-school’ movement takes public funds for schooling and often invests them with private learning management organizations that fund for-profit quasi-pubic school models. In Australia, whatever public funding exists is shared evenly with already wealthy private sector educational sites. In Germany, although still very slim, the private school sector is on the rise, financed predominantly by churches and religious organizations. These private schools service the upper classes, whose members want to avoid the rising heterogeneity in state-run schools. Here, though, pressure is built up through market-related opportunity-exploiting initiatives. While maintaining governmental influence over curriculum and testing requirements, the reduction of financing by the public purse creates many mandates that solely benefit the private sector as it relates to education.

In the economic model of free-market capitalism, we must also recognize that educational reform over the past 40 years has been particularly dependent on sorting people into distinct class groups where the service-based economy relies on a significant portion of the public sector to remain locked out of many of the benefits of formal education (Fasching-Varner et al., 2014; Cook, 2015; Bell 2019). In free-market capitalism, society depends on a variety of laborers and resultant educational attainment to bolster the increasing gap between wealthy and poor (Kotler, 2018; Boyle, 2019; 2018; Boyles 2018). Of the three countries about which we write, the US may manifest this divide the most; however, the more socialized landscapes of Australia and Germany are not immune to the sorting and separation that the free market creates. In all three contexts, the last five years have seen particular manifestations of this sorting that pin marginalized immigrants and refugees in the role of economic scapegoats for the benefit of the market elite (Inglehart, 2018; Heyer, 2018; Moreno, & Price 2018; Huerta, 2019; Hutchinson, 2019; Lester, & De La Rama, 2018; Hanson-Easey, 2018; Langenbacher, & Wittlinger, 2018; Beltran, 2017; Marek, 2019; Klikauer, 2018). Political leaders in all three countries have doused the landscape with a hateful fuel centered on fear and loathing of particular types of immigrants and refugees. In Australia, for example, Pauline Hanson, a xenophobic and anti-immigrant senator, entered the Senate chamber in a burqa, attempting to fuel a national fear around safety and creating a context to fear Muslim immigrants and refugees (Grant, More, & Lynch, 2018). Besides her burqa stunt, she and the political right in Australia have created campaigns based on vitriol and ignorance. The latter not only sends markers to immigrants that they should not feel like they belong, but, more importantly, have attempted to signal to dominant groups that these newcomers should be feared as not Australian (forced assimilation), as safety threats (their religions tell them to hate the dominant group), and as threats to the labor market (they are coming to take our jobs) (Falnnery, & Watt, 2018; Poynting, & Briskman, 2018).

In the US, Donald Trump began his campaign for president by claiming that Mexican immigrants are rapists and demanding a physical wall be built to separate Mexico from the United States (Kirk, & Martin, 2016). As president, he has worked to implement a travel ban targeting predominately Muslim countries and worked to eliminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which works to protect immigrants who came to the US as minors and have essentially lived their whole life in the United States. Trump has made bombastic and very high-profile speeches at political rallies and deployed social media to heighten a sense of fear and loathing along the same lines as Hanson in Australia (Johnson, 2017; Milkis, & Jacobs, 2017).

Germany has also experienced a dangerous rise in nationalist, right-wing, anti-Semitic, and generally xenophobic tendencies, which – especially after the 2015 migration – have helped the Alternative for Germanyparty become extremely successful, gaining over 20% of seats in some state parliaments (Arzheimer, & Berning, 2019). One of their most prominent members, Björn Höcke, has made speeches employing racist language, an interesting fact since he was a history teacher in the state of Hessen before he became a politician (Grabbow, 2016; Berg, 2018). And, this is happening in a country with a difficult history, that holds freedom of speech as one of its highest values. The rise in tension has, at least in part, prompted the ouster of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauser, who was leading Merkle’s Christian Democratic Union party and believed to be the next in line to serve as Chancellor of Germany. Within this political discourse, extreme tendencies become more and more successful when citizens from East Germany feel neglected by the West (Berlin Institute, 2019) and the public in general thinks that they cannot state their opinion in public anymore (Allensbach Institute, 2019).

The intersection of neo-liberal economic policies coupled with the targeting of marginalized peoples in our contexts ensures that as teachers enter the classroom they not only focus on their teaching, but must do that teaching work in a larger social context which is: 1) underfunded, 2) aimed at not actually reforming to allow growth of the educational reform industrial complex, and 3) contextualized in a way that further marginalizes already underrepresented groups. As teacher education programs have less time to prepare teachers, have increased demands on their financial and structural capabilities, and with increasingly privatized routes to the classroom, the challenges often become insurmountable hurdles for teachers. We see significantly low retention rates in the profession; many teachers entering the classroom are not likely to persist after five years (Gray, & Taie, 2015; Fasching-Varner, & Hartlep, 2015). The demands placed on teachers externally and internally, coupled with a lack of preparation, induction, or proper professional development, further jeopardize the articulated possibilities of what a free and public education might mean in the 21st century.

Glocality

While we discuss only the three countries that represent our localized experiences, we understand that the flat world creates a need to comprehend how education and schooling may provide possibilities toward transforming education and educational outcomes (Friedman, 2004; 2005; Darling-Hammond, 2012). As we have explored, there are a myriad of disconnections in what higher-education-based teacher education programs may want to deliver and what their capacity actually is, particularly given mounting pressures internally, populist and nationalistic discourses federally, and diverse landscapes used against diverse learners. While we each work in contexts that may appear to be our own national concerns, we see the larger landscape as one that is always already glocal — that is locally situated and globally facing, locally delivered and globally influenced (Chen, & Wellman, 2004; Hampton, 2010; Messina Dahlberg, & Bagga-Gupta, 2014; Roudometof, 2016; Porto, & Belmonte, 2014; Wellman, 2004; Thompson & Arsel, 2004). As educational scholars, we recognize that writing this is an act of glocality where the conversation alone prompts us to not see our challenges or opportunities are particularly reflective of a narrow or isolated occurrence, but as existing in replicated and replicable ways across the globe where we can be informed by a broader range of international contexts and ideas.

Global landscapes have great potential to inform local applications for practitioners of teacher education, as opposed to driving all decisions in increasingly and hyper-localized ways that consider narrow lanes of restrictive necessity (Brodeur, 2004). A glocalized approach, we argue, has the potential to consider the challenges we all face as global citizens, reflecting upon the often systemically oppressing — and increasingly ominous — backdrop to the work we do as teacher educators (Tsou, 2015; Wright, & Maton, 2004). How might glocality inform particular lessons about the interaction between experience and practice where damaging internal and external forces are resisted by networks of objectively and subjectively heavily engaged colleagues? Glocality is not simply understanding someone else’s experience; it is the call to ask exacting questions that intensify dialogue and engagement, where the answers to the questions neither derive from global nor particularly local standpoints. Glocality asks us to push the boundaries of our (dis)comfort and enter fully into the world with the substantial implications of grasping pressures created by neoliberalism and neonationalism which do not exist in isolation in only one country or place. Like Down (2012), our team is “deeply skeptical and increasingly outraged by market-driven prescriptions to fix education” (p. 70), yet, for better or worse, we as teacher educators, teachers, and communities are intentionally part of the ‘machine’ that is the free-market; consequently, our efforts are best addressed in broader, globally-informed, yet highly localized enactments (Ban, 2016). The approach we advocate creates a longer horizon line for engagement, expanding beyond our own worldviews and perspectives. So we end this contribution with the questions that drove, us, the authors, toward more glocalized thinking about what we have written here, and invite you as a reader to join in, extend, and transform this conversation with your glocal truths.

Guiding Questions

The need for global connections arises from our conversation in three distinct locations with underlying similarities. Pre-service teachers, teacher educators, and administrators are encouraged to grapple with the complexity of the changing global educational landscape. Posing a series of guiding questions, in five frames, helps focus the conversation and understanding of the current reality of teacher education and training so that readers also have a sense of how they might direct their energies when moving forward.

Question Frame 1 – How do accreditation processes and expectations, related to teacher education, function in practice? What, specifically, are the differences between the intent and impact of accreditation, particularly where accreditation appears to be more like surveillance than support in terms of the reflective capacity that could be generated?

Question Frame 2 – How might education and training programs address and plan for changing landscapes considering glocal implications? How might teacher educators provide opportunities to develop understandings of global consciousness while challenging localized narratives?

Question Frame 3 – How does the muddying of neoliberal and neo-nationalistic stimuli impact the complexities of teacher education and training, educational reforms, curricular decisions, and how do pedagogies impact current and intending teachers’ satisfaction with the profession?

Question Frame 4 – What can we learn from the status and value placed on teaching as a profession currently? How does this framing impact the economic and human capital assigned to preparing educators who are culturally sensitive, class aware, and structurally resistant, at both school and higher education levels? How might the framing of the work be reinterpreted to promote a different engagement?

Question Frame 5 – Given complex multinational and multicultural energies that contribute to a global understanding, how can practitioners prepare educators and future educators to be glocally engaged? How, in particular, might practitioners outgrow superficial understandings of the global community in their classrooms and work toward the cultivation of meaningful connections across spatial and cultural barriers?

Taking up the challenge of these questions provides for a more informed practice among teacher educators and classroom teachers. The call to practice glocality requires critical approaches and reflection through global and local lenses to focus on dialogue and building relationships.

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About the Authors

Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner: Director of the Gayle A. Zeiter Literacy Center and Associate Professor of Literacy Education, College of Education, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (USA); email: kenneth.varner@unlv.edu

Renee P. Desmarchelier: Acting Associate Dean for Learning, Teaching, and Student Success and Senior Lecturer in Critical Pedagogy, University of Southern Queensland (Australia); email: renee.desmarchelier@usq.edu.au

David Gerlach: Post-Habil Researcher at the Institute for School Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, Philipps-Universität (Germany); email: david.gerlach@uni-marburg.de

Peter Wiens: Assistant Professor of Teacher Education, College of Education, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (USA); email: peter.wiens@unlv.edu

P.G. Schrader: Department of Teaching and Learning Chair and Professor of Interaction & Media Sciences, College of Education, University of Nevada, Las Vegas (USA); email: pg.schrader@unlv.edu

Barry Down: Professor of Education, School of Education, Murdoch University (Australia); email: b.down@murdoch.edu.au

Lindsay Stewart: Doctoral Candidate in Curriculum Studies, College of Education and Human Sciences, Louisiana State University (USA); email: lstew44@lsu.edu

Michaela Stone: Visiting Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education, School of Cultural and Human Studies, Northern Vermont University (USA); email: Michaela.stone@northernvermont.edu

Nigel Bagnall: Associate Professor of Education in Comparative and International Education, University of Sydney (Australia); email: nigel.bagnall@sydney.edu.au

Mareen Lüke: Doctoral Candidate at the Institute for School Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, Philipps-Universität (Germany); email: luekema@students.uni-marburg.de

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