Vision for the New Global Teacher: Reflections from a Comparative Education Perspective

Abstract

The Global Teacher/Orbital Classroom Initiative seeks to address updated teaching needs in the current era of a changed globalisation landscape, to foster the goals of democracy, global citizenship, intercultural education, and international understanding. Undergirded by philosophical and theoretical considerations and insights from decades of educational scholarship, an international group of participants set out to develop appropriate and relevant competences and pedagogical approaches to foster development of a more worldly Global Teacher, and to eventually provide practical operationalisations for use in an Orbital Classroom connecting teachers and students in many countries and settings worldwide. This chapter incorporates main features of the initiative and explicates the rationales for it in light of contemporary educational research writing calling for updated policy and practice in the new millennium and in terms of addressing current global level initiatives such as EFA, MDGs and GEFI, as well as rationales for teachers themselves. The importance of context in all of its complexity is emphasised, as are the global-local-dialectic and comparative interdisciplinary approach which are recommended as standard desirable practices. These notions are illustrated in the example of teaching about the contemporary migration crisis impacting Europe. The many challenges entailed in effective implementation and sustainability of the Global Teacher Initiative are enumerated, including the overarching need for recruitment, support and training of teachers as participants, and the means of sustainability.