Seeing Big,

Seeing Small:
Viewing The Structure of Teacher Education
through Multiple Lenses
Cheryl J. Craig, Ph.D.
The secret of seeing is the
“the pearl of great price.”

--Annie Dillard
Sometimes…we see
and understand…
Seeing Small
Seeing Big
 Small Stories That
Teachers Live

System Stories
They Live Within
 We need to learn to move
back-and-forth between the
two kinds of stories….
 This is not easy because the
world has become increasingly
pluralistic and globalized
 How do we move from the local to the global and back
again, particularly where teacher education is concerned?
Structure of Teacher Education
Experience
Countries Where ISATT Members Come From
 Belgium 1983

Solomon Islands
 A school made of shipping containers in South
Africa

 The teachers working there also struggle with

accountability pressures
 Teacher research is widespread in Iran

 Iranian teacher education will soon have a

comprehensive funded teacher research component.
Trajectory of India’s reflective tradition
 This was our first time as Chinese nationals that we felt the
impact of globalization in an international milieu.
Everything about the global economy—technology, human
capital immigration, internationalization of education and
different language usages—presented itself in varied
cultural colors at the conference.

---Xiaohong Yang, China

 He continued:

Forced to move out of and then back into our culture-

specific perspective in an effort to understand
perspectives of other cultures and to find our own
position in the international arena, we gained a great
deal in terms of knowledge, skills, and attitudes in our
interactions with educators and scholars from all
around the world. In fact, a new horizon emerged in our
understanding of education in general, and education
in China in particular.
 Professor Antόnio Nόvoa, Rector, University of
Lisbon, Portugal:

In Education, the past always strikes back. We don’t need

more past. We need more history. Problems of teachers
will not be solved only within the school. Prophecies of
salvation through the school enclose teachers in
unreasonable ambitions, blaming them for the failures of
school reform.
Models of Teacher Education Vehicles for Dissemination

• Composing a life as a teacher educator:

WESTERN Narratives of experience from the Centre for
CANADA Research for Teacher Education and
Development, University of Alberta

EASTERN • Pedagogies for teacher education policy

development in Canada: Democratic
CANADA dialogue

PEOPLE’S • The policy analysis and debate on Internship:

REPUBLIC OF An exemplar of research conducted at the
CHINA Center for Teacher Education Research
 Models of Teacher Education Vehicles for Dissemination

• Israel’s MOFET Institute: "Community

of Communities" for the creation and
ISRAEL dissemination of knowledge of teacher
education

• The use of evidence to improve education

NEW ZEALAND and serve the public good: New Zealand's
Best Evidence Synthesis Programme

BELGIUM,
IRELAND, • InFo-TED: Bringing policy, research, and
practice together around teacher educator
NORWAY, USA development
Seeing Big
The Structure of Teacher Education
Handbook Chapter
The narrative inquiry chapter The structure of teacher
The reflective practitioner education chapter
chapter
The school reform chapter
The teachers’ best-loved self
chapter
The teacher/teacher education
attrition chapter
 Involvement in global projects in
addition to ISATT

Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Project

South Korea Research Projects
Asian American Study Center Projects
 It was the multicultural method I discovered
along the way that made the chapter a
fascinating one for me to research and write
Blömeke and Paine’s (2008), Getting the
fish out of the water: Considering benefits
and problems of doing research on teacher
education at an international level

pay more attention to specificities and

complexities
—“seeing big”
Schville et al.’s included a table of
Comparison study of information of use beyond
middle school mathematics the idea of countries having
teacher education across concurrent or consecutive
about six countries teacher education programs
• Research assistants • Completed the table
using their knowledge
• Doctoral students
of education in China,
• International Taiwan, the Philippines,
doctoral students Argentina, Turkey and
• Visiting faculty so forth.
 Researched different
Contacted scholars in
countries’ teacher
each countries and asked Revised what we had
education systems to see
them to review what we researched/written based
if we could find
had written for its on their input
something
accuracy
incorrect/missing
 Here are some of the over 50 countries whose structures of
teacher education we sampled with the help of local
experts
• Canada • Norway • Israel
• United States • Portugal • Oman
• Mexico • Spain • Botswana
• Cuba • Sweden • Kenya
• Argentina • Switzerland • South Africa
• Brazil • Czech Republic • Zambia
• Chile • Estonia • China
• England • Georgia • Japan
• Northern • Kazakhstan • South Korea
Ireland • Poland • Taiwan
• Scotland • Russian • India
• Wales Federation • Pakistan
• France • Slovakia • Malaysia
• Finland • Turkey • Philippines
• Germany • Cyprus • Singapore
• Greece • Egypt • Australia
• Netherlands • Iran • New Zealand
Regions of the World
 The teacher education structure of Cyprus
• the hardest to write about
• a different history was shared by different experts

I simply wrote that its structure of teacher education was

convoluted due to the country’s division along ethnic, cultural
and political lines
 Finland distinguishes itself
with its theme of “trust
through professionalism”
 Iran refers to its prospective and
practicing teachers as ‘nation
builders’
 Despite educators being high paid in Mexico, student
achievement is characteristically low.
 Norway is facing a teacher shortage in less than ten
years. To abate this phenomenon, the country has
started a national school of teacher education.
 Oman has few people with more than 7th grade
education—These individuals would be considered
teachers, but they are not prepared, certified teachers
as we would think of them.
 In South Korea, teachers have the highest social status and
receive pensions from the state. The largest colleges in
Korean universities are schools of education. Everyone
wants to be a teacher… There is a comprehensive selection
system—including performance testing—to determine who
will have the honor of being Korea’s teachers.
 Most Complex Structures of Teacher Education
Switzerland

France

United States
 This work conclusively showed that politics, in
addition to history and culture, plays a decisive
role in how international structures of teacher
education have taken shape.
 +
British
Commonwealth

Australia Canada New Zealand

The Effects

_
British
Commonwealth

India Malaysia Pakistan Zambia

 Portugal

Brazil Mozambique
The Effects
Spain

Argentina Chile Mexico

 Multiple
Soviet Foreign
Union Occupations

Estonia Georgia China Philippines

 Bologna
Agreement

Czech Slovakia Turkey Switzerland

Italy Netherland Spain ?
Republic? ? !!!
Delivering International Keynote Addresses
since 2007
Estonia → South Africa
 In South Africa, I learned the Ubuntu
philosophy—“I am who I am because of
who we are”—the idea that we become
through being with others…
 →United Kingdom
 Herstmonceux Castle Conference
→ Chíle
86-year old school in Valparaíso
86-year old school in Valparaíso
One middle school teacher’s class I visited in China

an amazing lesson on subway graffiti and evidence of

it from over the world—Paris, London, Moscow,
New York, Washington, Toronto ….
The teacher had never left China—

He had found all

of his material for
his stunning lesson
on the internet.
Massey University, New Zealand
English as a Foreign Language University, Hyderabad, India
Did I think they were handicapped because they did not have
the opportunity to study in the West (US)?
Closing Comments
 I began with Annie
Dillard’s comment
that the secret of
seeing—and the
ability to reflect on
what one sees—is
 “the pearl of great
price”
 I coupled Dillard’s observation with Maxine Greene’s
discussion of seeing small—as in structures and
systems—and seeing big —as in people and particularities
The ability to see big and see
small opens the floodgates for
us being able “to wail the right
questions…” about teacher
education….

I welcome your observations and

comments from reading the chapter.