Globalisation has been defined as 'the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa' (Arnove, 1999: 2: Held, 1991: 9). The global process has resulted in the stimulation of large-scale systemic reform, but necessarily it transforms the local and even personal contexts of social experience also, hence the prevalence of the term ‗global village‟. Globalisation has encouraged both global integration and national fragmentation (Taylor et al., 1997). The phenomenon of globalisation has entailed global economic interdependence, a process fostered by multi-national corporations. This has entered social, cultural and political spheres also, resulting in situations where the global and the local compete for expression. The World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are international political organisations and are keys in driving globalisation policy. In Kazmi‘s (2005) terms:
‗Three factors are mainly responsible for converging the world: the
introduction of scientific and technological innovation; dismantling of the Eastern Bloc and emergence of the new regional blocs like The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the European Union (EU) and South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC); and dominance of the ideology of market-led regulation, initially applied to economic and financial exchanges, and now applied to a variety of other sectors of human activity including health and education‟. (P. 91)
‗Globalisation, both as a phenomenon and as a creed, may influence and affect education. Different thinkers, philosophers of education and educators entertain different and contrasting perspectives on existing global trends and tendencies‘ (Tonna, 2007: 90). Ibrahim (2005) argues that the challenges of the new millennium such as the rapid globalisation, the tremendous impacts of information technology, the international transformation towards knowledge-driven economy, and international and regional
world. Policy makers and educators in each country have to think how to reform education to prepare their potential leaders to cope more effectively with the challenges of the new era.
Globalisation poses fundamental challenges for all areas of education. At one level it provides, through economic liberalisation, unprecedented access to peoples, cultures, economies and languages. The education sector could also see its response to this phenomenon purely in market driven terms by enhancing the skills and knowledge required to be efficient consumers and workers in the global economy (First Annual Report, 1998) and ‗education cannot ignore the realities of the global market. But nor can it surrender to global commodification‘ (Green, 1997: 186).
After these general considerations, ‗concerns are narrowed down to the effects of globalisation on education in relation to the teaching profession‘ (Tonna, 2007: 88). According to Reid (2000):
„A view of the contents of education journals reveals that many societies are reviewing their methods of preparing teachers, though not all in the direction of centralisation and towards more school involvement‟. (P. 223)
Many countries have accepted the idea that teachers‘ education and teachers‘ professional development are keys to any national reform on education. Throughout the world, teachers‘ professional development takes place in very different formats and time frames. Boli & Ramirez (1986) argue that it is crucial that educational development is considered from a world perspective, since borrowing and diffusion of ideas is normal. Further it has to be appreciated that the importance of the preparation of teachers is such that it is, like education itself, a key concern of most societies and their governments around the world.
Around the world a majority of countries utilise pre-service and in-service programmes to promote professional development. Efforts are being made globally to improve teacher education programmes and enhance teachers‘ professional
development in the wake of information and communications technology and growing notions of globalisation, including theories of free-trade market economy (Rehmani, 2006). It is important to recognize that despite the familiarity of these ideas there are important differences between the different countries in the way in which these processes of reform have been constructed. While there is convergence in the nature of the challenges in teacher education, the solutions to these challenges are different according to the cultural tradition of every country. That said, the ‗globalisation‘ issue is relevant to this research, as it examines two countries from very different regions, normally classified as ‗Western‘ and ‗Eastern‘.
The way the system of training teachers has evolved can vary considerably from country to country, and even within one country, due to such factors as;
the educational culture of the country;
the historical development of teacher training; the schools system;
financial resources and political imperatives; the supply and demand for teachers; and duration of teacher education programme.
An OECD (1996) paper demonstrated that many countries in the developed world were engaged in a process of ‗systemic reform‘ of their education service. This is based on a growing awareness around the world that changing one element of an education system has knock-on effects on the rest of the system and that it is more effective to aim at changing the system as a whole (Townsend, 1996). Although a trend towards convergence has been promoted by the European Commission and OECD policies, systems of teacher education in Europe remain of ‗a highly heterogeneous nature‘ (Buchberger et al, 2000: 12). On the other hand, the nature of teacher training in many countries of Asia and Africa has not had an outstandingly successful track record,
viewed as an academic pursuit, albeit at a lower level than university, and in countries where there are separate ministers of higher and ‗ordinary‘ education, it is often grouped with higher education and accordingly administratively separated from the schools it is meant to serve (Iredale, 1996).
Cross-national convergence in educational policy and a standardisation agenda have been stimulated by supranational organisations acting in the field of education (Adick, 2002; Arnove, 1999). In initial teacher education specifically, Schnaitmann (1998) accounts for a trend of international convergence since the 1990s by the fact that around the world, technocratic rationality and technicism in teacher education programmes have been denounced. In the face of this criticism, teacher educators have attempted ‗to find a new way to integrate harmoniously the critical, the academic and the professional components of a teacher education programme‘ designed to prepare teachers to become critical intellectuals (ibid: 156).