Abstract
In this chapter, a project to globalize an online asynchronous instructional technology course will be detailed. While participating in the Longview Foundation's Global Teacher Education (GTE) Fellows Program, the author internationalized her course through the use of the Global Read Aloud. The Global Read Aloud is a project created by a teacher in 2010 to bring together classrooms across the globe through the shared experience of a read aloud on a global topic. To participate in the Global Read Aloud, teachers self-organize using a variety of instructional technologies. The author arranged for her class to participate in a Canadian 5th grade teacher's slow chat on Twitter. Planning, development, and assessment of the globalized elements of the course will be shared.
TopIntroduction
Teachers graduating from teacher education programs in the United States today will serve a more diverse student body than ever before. Groups such as the Longview Foundation have called for teacher preparation program to prepare teachers for the world in which they will teach. It is imperative then, that “professional education courses teach the pedagogical skills to enable future teachers to teach the global dimensions of their subject matter” (The Longview Foundation, 2008, p.6). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Asia Society provide a framework and numerous examples to support teachers in teaching for global competence (OECD/Asia Society, 2018). The framework for teaching for global competence includes four domains: investigate the world, recognize perspectives, communicate ideas, and take action.
It is within this context that the author became a Longview Foundation Global Teacher Education Fellow for the 2022-2023 academic year. Through the sharing of resources and guidance of experts in the field of global education, the author globalized her Instructional Technology course. Utilizing the Global Read Aloud (GRA), the author created a module and project to address the OECD/Asia Society’s four domains of global competence alongside the International Society for Technology in Education’s (ISTE) Standards for Educators and Students (ISTE, 2016, 2017) that call for students and teachers to participate in global networks and to collaborate globally.
Globalizing Teacher Education
Preparing globally competent teachers that can support the development of globally competent students is essential in our increasingly globalized world, one in which their future students will live and work around the world, whether in person or remotely, engaging with many and varied cultures in their lifetime (Song et al., 2023; Zhao, 2010). It is the work of teacher education then, to provide pre-service and in-service teachers with the knowledge, experiences, and pedagogies necessary to develop their own global competence and the global competence of their students. And in order to do this, teachers must develop more than a soft global citizenship, but a critical lens of global education (Andreotti, 2006; Choo, 2018; Hauerwas et al., 2023; Slapac, 2021; Slapac et al., 2023; Tichnor-Wagner et al., 2016), one that can “[e]mpower individuals to reflect critically on the legacies and processes of their cultures, to imagine different futures and to take responsibility for decisions and actions” (Andreotti, 2006, p. 48).
The work around critically globalizing teacher education has been developing over the past decade or so with many researchers providing implementation strategies, pedagogies, and reflections to support global competence in teachers. For example, Hauerwas et al. (2023) collaborated transnationally with faculty and pre-service teachers using two innovations: storytelling and social-emotional thinking routines, which allowed the teacher educator researchers to center dialogue in their critical global teaching praxis. Tichnor-Wagner et al. (2016) explored the signature pedagogies of in-service teachers who taught for global competence in several different content areas. They found that these signature pedagogies provided “visions of possibility for concrete practices teachers can adapt” (p. 2). Ramos et al. (2020) used the four domains of global competence and Global Thinking Routines (Boix Mansilla, 2016/2017; Boix Mansilla et al., 2017) as pedagogical tools to explore the lived experiences of immigration and refugees in an online asynchronous graduate education course. Slapac et al. (2023) examined the reflections of five lecturers using Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) to strengthen social justice pedagogy. The globalizing of the Instructional Technology course outlined in this chapter will serve as a further example of globalizing teacher education.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Globalizing Teacher Education: Infusing teacher education courses and programs with a global perspective utilizing a variety of methods and strategies including global texts, virtual exchange, study abroad, etc. Also referred to as internationalizing teacher education.
Global Competence: Global competence is defined by the OECD/Asia Society and the PISA framework (OECD/Asia Society, 2018 AU33: The in-text citation "OECD/Asia Society, 2018" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the reference to the list, or delete the citation. , p. 12) through four key aspects: 1) investigate the world beyond their immediate environment by examining issues of local, global, and cultural significance; 2) recognize, understand, and appreciate the perspectives and world views of others; 3) communicate ideas effectively with diverse audiences by engaging in open, appropriate, and effective interactions across cultures; and 4) take action for collective well-being and sustainable development both locally and globally.
Critically Globalizing Teacher Education: Using critical or post-colonial theory to frame globalizing teacher education with careful consideration of the dominant power structures and how those might affect the work of globalization in different contexts.
Twitter Chat: A Twitter chat is a discussion on Twitter (now X) connected through a shared hashtag usually taking place synchronously over the course of an hour and utilized by teachers as a form of informal professional development. Slow Twitter chats typically take place over the course of a week.
Social Justice: Equality of treatment and equity of distribution of resources so that everyone in society is treated with fairness, humanity, and justice ( Song et al., 2023 ).
ISTE Standards: International Society of Technology in Education Standards for the use of technology in the classroom.
Global Read Aloud: A movement by teachers, started in 2010 by Pernille Ripp, to have a shared global experience reading books aloud to students and then connecting cross-culturally using various technologies.