Abstract
Editors’ notes
This special issue is a result of international conferences and seminars held in Bergen and Shanghai over several years. Preceding these seminars and conferences were years of cooperation, cultural exchange and many visits between scholars of East China Normal University (ECNU) and Bergen University College (BUC). Matters of globalisation, education reform, and teacher and preschool teacher education have been addressed in many formats. The cooperation started 15 years ago with drama in teacher education and later through the exchange of master’s students. The cooperation was later expanded to preschool education. This cooperation has been substantial, resulting in seminars and conferences, exchange of post-docs and the cooperation and hosting of PhD projects over the years. Preschool teacher students from Bergen recently visited Shanghai in a comparative education programme.
Six years ago the cooperation was further expanded to cooperation between the Institute of Schooling Reform and Development (at ECNU) and the Centre of Educational Research (at BUC) on reform and teacher education research. The project ‘The Glocal Researcher and Teacher’ has continued to develop a conversation with aims of understanding new premises of teaching locally, nationally and globally. The strategy of the cooperation has been to build trust, visit each other regularly, partake in cultural exchange and build common scientific understandings brick by brick.
Introduction
Teaching has been closely connected with the political, cultural and economic interest of the nation state. Different modes of globalisation challenge or transform the nation state’s power, monopoly and role in education in numerous ways. New premises of being a teacher in a nation state have emerged. Globalisation challenges political governance, the teaching profession, legislation, national goals, curriculums, contents and methods of teaching. This is the broad theme of this special issue in Policy Futures in Education. We try to address some of the challenges with multiple perspectives on premises of being a teacher in a global age.
Among the present challenges is the growth of global public spheres, media cultures and multiculturalism. Even if these are global phenomena, they are also locally present in classrooms. They challenge and influence the goal of national curriculums and knowledge policies. They have an effect on the opinions, identity and knowledge of pupils and parents. The premises of teaching and learning locally are therefore global as well as national. New digital platforms challenge the traditional limitations in space, time, and even the room of the teaching profession. Teaching and learning resources are accumulated fast and are distributed wide in an open and globally shared knowledge economy. This raises new ethical, economic and democratic possibilities and challenges for teaching. International human rights and children’s rights conventions are being integrated into national legislation. They influence curriculum, school bills and white papers. Human rights and international legislation give students and parents new and unprecedented rights that both limit and give possibilities to new nation state policies and pedagogies.
The effect of globalisation is not unproblematic. We have had a wide, deep and fast globalisation without a parallel institutionalisation to deal both with its full potential and challenges. Regions are left behind in the economic race between nations. Migration from rural areas to cities is massive in large parts of the world. Industries and labour move fast and present challenges to the education system’s capacity in many places. Reforms, education comparisons, and models of governance travel rapidly internationally with uncertain effects in national and local settings. International crises, challenges and border crossing themes such as sustainable development, migration, poverty and climate change demand new insights, new content, goals and methods in teaching that will support and foster cooperation and problem solving that cross national and regional boundaries, cultures and traditional political institutions.
A part of a necessary international institutionalisation is the development of ‘glocal’ teaching to address problems and possibilities. The relation between the global and local can be described as a ‘glocal’ perspective and is investigated and discussed as a concept through the different articles in this special issue.
‘The Glocal Teacher’ issue studies how discourses of globalisation and political responses affect and create parallel and paradoxical agencies of teaching. We present and discuss the impact of globalisation on the policies and dynamics of Chinese educational reforms over the past three decades. Playing with ‘glocality’, a nationally appointed leader for developing a national framework for kindergartens illustrates how a process of revising a curriculum implies processes of ‘glocalisation’ with a fresh example of such a process from Norway. Globalisation has had a deep impact on the welfare state and educational policies in Europe. Commoditisation of the teaching profession in Europe is another effect of globalisation studied in this issue.
Following the effects of globalisation on nation states’ educational politics, curriculums and professions, we present a critical enquiry on a concrete cross-cultural comparative programme within preschool teacher education. The issue investigates how teaching teams in China respond to globalisation locally through research of typical boundary activities. ‘The Glocal Teacher’ also presents an article on how an influential global teaching method and idea is translated and transformed into a local practice in Norway. The issue’s last article presents research on how globalisation and national policies affect children’s educational needs and create difficulties in socialising children in contemporary China.
The articles
In the article ‘The glocal teacher: The paradox agency of teaching in a glocalised world’, Tom Are Trippestad presents the concept of rhetorical agency to understand and analyse parallel and paradoxical agencies teachers are offered and limited by under discourses of globalisation within education policies and curriculums. The emergence of an open global science and knowledge economy demands an agency of science, of global sharing and distribution of knowledge. This agency puts new ethical, technical and democratic demands on teachers. The open knowledge economy also creates political panic reactions nationally. Restorative political attempts to arrest change, to protect the nation’s culture and community, also have emerged during the last 20 years. The role of teachers as governed rhetorical agents of a nation’s culture and identity is emphasised in parallel with the global agency. Also, a particular teacher agency of training pupils in basic skills, identities and personalities both suited to master the shifts and drifts of globalisation and the national interest has emerged. The article raises normative questions on what kind of agencies are needed and what balance of these agencies is necessary for teaching in an open and globalised world. It suggests new interpretations of the bildung tradition as a constructive and tentative response.
In the article ‘The political dynamics of educational changes in China’, Zhongjing Huang, Ting Wang and Xiaojun Li explore the trajectory of educational changes in China over the past three decades in the context of globalisation, and social and economic transformation. They address three research questions: what educational changes occurred in China; why some educational policies worked well but others failed; how the political dynamics of educational changes interplayed with each other. Informed by the literature on ‘glocalisation’ and ‘controlled decontrol’, the authors develop a two-dimensional theoretical framework to analyse the political dynamics of educational changes in China. The article examines the tensions between globalisation and localisation, and centralisation and decentralisation in educational policies. Through a critical review of educational policies, this article provides insight into alternative interpretations of the dynamics of educational changes in China as an ‘organised anarchy’ along a continuum of a global–local dimension and a decentralised–centralised dimension. Changes have been both government-dominated and incremental. A critical review of the educational changes over the past 30 years indicates that Chinese policymakers have tried to take a balanced and ‘moderate’ way, aiming to keep a balance between globalisation and localisation, centralisation and decentralisation, top-down and bottom-up, and equity-oriented and quality-oriented approaches. The authors argue that this balance reflects China’s ambition in addressing education quality, equality and social justice, and reducing urban/rural and regional disparity.
‘Glocality in play: Efforts and dilemmas in changing the model of the teacher for the Norwegian national framework for kindergartens.’ is written by Elin Eriksen Ødegaard, who is the appointed leader of developing the national framework for kindergartens in Norway. She presents a difficult political mandate encouraged by overseas documents on the one hand and an expectation to be concerned about the Nordic holistic tradition on the other. A wide vision of the ‘glocal’ teacher’, a framework where ethical considerations for the future of children are highlighted, and where local, situated and culture-sensitive practices also are encouraged, is used to address the dilemmas. A ‘glocal’ model of the teacher is set up to serve as a thinking tool in the process of increasing awareness of global shared concerns and at the same time understanding the impact of local traditions.
Tobias Werler discusses the transformation of European teacher education against the background of a multidimensional transformation of European welfare states in his article ‘Commodification of teacher professionalism’. Globalisation affects the fundamental values and organising principles of European societies. It marks a loss of civil rights being substituted by economic rights. States have lost the ability and self-confidence to give meaning to mass civilisation. As a consequence, governments apply concepts objectifying the social reality of the world. This has allowed for business discourses of performance, standards and accountability to enter teacher education. Werler develops an argumentation for the transformation of the European welfare state and its professions by applying the concept of the ill-defined problem. This serves as the background for a deeper discussion of teacher professionalism and how it is transformed. A four-step analysis is applied: it outlines the instrumentalisation of teacher education, the commoditisation of the teacher education curriculum, redefinition of learning as labour, as well as the underpinning of these developments by the commoditisation of teacher professionalism by learning outcomes.
The article ‘Cross-cultural comparative education – fortifying preconceptions or transformation of knowledge?’ by Åsta Birkeland performs a critical enquiry of comparative education by using an example of a comparative programme within kindergarten teacher education in-between Norway and China. The article discusses the inclination in cross-cultural comparative studies to emphasise cultural essentialism, to evaluate educational practice from a monocultural perspective, and to overlook the interrelation between globalisation and local practices. The article further argues for promoting dialogism in order to understand local practices in cross-cultural comparative studies. Furthermore, the article underlines the importance of extending the understanding of context and to problematise the position of the students in order to construct knowledge which challenges their preconceptions and contributes to a positive transformation of knowledge.
In ‘Boundary activities of middle school teacher teams in a global era’, Shengnan Liu & Daming Feng argues that globalisation makes the environment of an organisation become more dynamic, complicated and uncertain. From the premise of teacher teamwork as an effective method of school improvement and the premise of a long tradition of valuing collectivism and collaboration in China, Liu and Feng investigate the boundary activities of teacher teams of middle schools in China. Boundary activities are the tactics to span, maintain and guard organisational boundaries. To respond to the new challenges of globalisation in education, teacher teams need to manage boundary activities both to maintain a sustainable development for their organisation and to protect their core technology. The first study employs an inductive approach to identify a set of boundary activities that teacher teams engage in to manage their relationships with the outside. The second study is conducted to build a valid and reliable scale for the boundary activities of teacher teams. Liu and Feng present a four-factor model of teacher team boundary activities that include the following sub-scales: scouting activities, task-coordinating activities, information filtering activities, and emotion cultivating activities. Similarities and differences between the current findings and existing literature are discussed.
The lesson study (LS) model, which originated in Japan, has become popular all over the world. In ‘Lesson study model: The challenge of transforming a global idea into local practice’, Gerd Grimseth and Bjørg Oddrun Hallås highlight some of the challenges encountered when a travelling teaching model is picked up and introduced in a local school context in a Norwegian municipality. The article views this process in the light of research on LS-model transfer into local contexts in various countries. They consider the impact modes of collaboration on the implementation of a borrowed idea. The aim of the article is to reflect upon the challenges encountered in transforming a global idea into local practice. A four-stage composite-process model has provided the framework for their reflection: cross-national attraction, decision-making, implementation and internalisation. The article argues that the LS model may undergo substantial transformation from an idea that is global, into a practice that is glocal.
In ‘The needs and difficulties in socializing the young in contemporary China’, Yeh Hsueh, Jun Hao and Hui Zhang present an article on how substantial societal changes of globalisation, national policies, and migration intertwine in contemporary China and redefine preschool-aged children’s needs in development and learning. Their research is original and has been supported by the global children’s programme Sesame Street. They identify and focus on parenting goals that are present in all cultures: (1) the survival goal to ensure that young children survive by providing for their health and safety; (2) the economic goal to ensure that young children acquire the skills and other resources needed to be economically productive adults; (3) the cultural goal to ensure that young children acquire the basic cultural values of the group. The ways in which parents attempt to achieve these goals vary remarkably from culture to culture. This article presents how Chinese experts explain the urgent educational needs of young children in contemporary culture in China. Preschool-aged children in China need to become enculturated as Chinese while at the same time being socialised to become citizens of the world, an identity that is different from the past and the present.
Editors’ notes
Introduction: Tom Are Trippestad & Zhongjing Huang.
The articles
Tom Are Trippestad: The glocal teacher: The paradox agency of teaching in a glocalised world.
Zhongjing Huang, Ting Wang & Xiaojun Li: The political dynamics of educational changes in China.
Elin Eriksen Ødegaard: Glocality in play: Efforts and dilemmas in changing the model of the teacher for the Norwegian national framework for kindergartens.
Tobias Werler: Commodification of teacher professionalism.
Åsta Birkeland: Cross-cultural comparative education – fortifying preconceptions or transformation of knowledge?
Shengnan Liu & Daming Feng: Boundary activities of middle school teacher teams in a global era: Empirical evidence from China.
Gerd Grimseth and Bjørg Oddrun Hallås: Lesson study model: The challenge of transforming a global idea into local practice.
Yeh Hsueh, Jun Hao & Hui Zhang: The needs and difficulties in socializing the young in contemporary China: Early childhood education experts’ perspectives.