Developing a policy for an international experience requirement in a graduate teacher education program: a cautionary tale

Abstract

This case study describes the process education faculty went through to craft a response to a school-wide international experience initiative. Analysis revealed three competing frames that shaped individual faculty members' expectations. This made developing an internationalization requirement in graduate teacher education multifaceted, often ambiguous, and at times contentious. Failure to acknowledge and reconcile the tensions of these competing frames limited the efficacy of the policy. This is a cautionary tale providing lessons learned from one university's experience.

The implementation of internationalisation in Israeli teacher training colleges

“…Indeed, several scholars (Altbach & Knight, ; Dolby & Rahman, ) maintain that it has been mainstreamed and embedded in institutional strategic plans and is no longer a luxury, but rather an essential part of all reforms in colleges and universities. This growing interest has translated into the active development of policies, programmes, and infrastructures at institutional, local, and national levels and has led to a call to internationalise traditionally locally‐oriented institutions such as teachers’ colleges (Buczynski, Lattimer, Inoue, & Alexandrowicz, ; Yemini, ).…”

Between the Familiar and Strange: Understanding Good Teaching in Transnational Education Settings

“…International field placements have increasingly been offered within initial teacher education (Buczynski, Lattimer, Inoue, & Alexandrowicz, 2010;Lee, 2011) and are generally situated within a study abroad context (Kabilan, 2013), with traditional internationalization post-secondary activities designed to "enhance the competitiveness, prestige, and strategic alliances" (Altbach & Knight, 2007, p. 293). Little has been written about how pre-service teachers construct understandings and judgments about teaching in such environments.…”

“…Existing research on these projects focuses on impacts, such as cultural and global awareness, that prepare preservice teachers to cope with today's diverse classrooms (Cushner & Mahon, 2002;Malewski, Sharma, & Phillion, 2012;Myers, 1997;Stachowski & Sparks, 2007). With calls for teachers to be "equipped to prepare all students for their roles in this diverse world" (ACDE, 2005), literature positions such professional and personal development as a response (or solution) to these calls and research supports this call (Buczynski et al, 2010;Lee, 2011). However, good teaching is generally still situated as the application of propositional knowledge (namely one focusing on what culture exists within the host location) and procedural knowledge (namely how one is to teach students from diverse cultural backgrounds).…”

Internationalization Motivations and Strategies of Israeli Educational Administration Programs

“…Increasingly, leaders of higher education institutions are striving to internationalize their institutions for economic, political, academic, and sociocultural rationales (de Wit, 2002), while governments also invest increased resources in this process. This growing interest has translated into the active development of policies, programs, and infrastructure at institutional, local, and national levels, and has produced a call to internationalize traditionally locally oriented faculties such as education (Buczynski, Lattimer, Inoue, & Alexandrowicz, 2010; Yemini, Nissan, & Shavit, 2014). The pressures on graduate schools of education to internationalize not only comprise part of the global internationalization trends in higher education but are also characterized by unique field-specific influences.…”