Internationalization of teacher education in universities: Implications in implementation

Abstract

Globalization has brought with it close contact and interaction between nations. This development has been shown to have tremendous consequences in cultural, economic social and educational terms. As a result of migrations within and over national boundaries, people are meeting each other under different circumstances. This mobility has resulted to workers with different professional backgrounds finding themselves having to work in countries far away from where they undertook their training. In particular, teachers found themselves in a difficult situation in trying to fit into systems that did not totally match the skills and knowledge they received in the different training programs they underwent In a bid to fill some of the gaps that emerged between the various Teacher Training Programs. There have been attempts to internationalize Teacher Education in order to create harmony among Teacher Training Institutions in the global village in which the world has come to be. The concept of networking as an instrument of learning has been used as one of the processes to achieve the internalization of Teacher education. It is through networking that is possible to respect each other’s value systems ininternational understanding. Internationalization of Teacher Education has positive and negative effects and the challenge posed is participating and interacting in the internationalization while preserving educational identity of the respective nations involved. This paper proposes to discuss the benefits of internationalization of Teacher Education, the processes involved and the risks that are likely to arise from the internationalization. The paper examines how Teacher Training programs should produce a teacher who competently discharges his/her duties in any corner of the globe and at the same time maintain the uniqueness of education systems of the various nations.