Contextualizing Versus Internationalizing Research on Teacher Education: Competing or Complementary Goals?

At our first Journal Editor's Roundtable for Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) 5 years ago at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) after assuming the editorship in 2010, we engaged in discussion with various attendees about the nature of the journal and our vision for the duration of our term as editors. We received several questions about whether we accepted international manuscripts because we were perceived by many to be a unique "American" journal with a sole interest in research on preservice teacher (PST) education and inservice professional development in the United States. Although we were disturbed by that perception, because attracting more international contributors and readers was one of our major goals, on reflection we were not surprised. The membership of our sponsoring organization, the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE), consists of U.S. institutions and historically has closely aligned itself to matters of national accreditation and policy. Not surprisingly, the SAGE Publisher's Report to AACTE in 2010 indicated that only 1 of over 200 manuscripts submitted from countries outside of the United States to AACTE's flagship research journal had been accepted for publication and that particular manuscript was from a Canadian author. In addition, the first author of this editorial recalled that she and a colleague had conducted a review of literature in the early part of the millennium on professional development for teachers of diverse students that had explicitly restricted the review to publications of research in the United States (Knight & Wiseman, 2006). A National Advisory Team for Professional Development for Diversity established by the Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence (CREDE) guided the review. The reasoning of the group around international research appears in this quotation from one of the publications. Our search for studies for the synthesis focused on research on professional development for in-service teachers in U.S. classrooms populated by diverse students. We recognize that high-quality research on professional development in other countries exists, but our rationale for excluding international studies in this review is similar to that discussed in Richardson and Placier (2002). Studies of professional development for teachers in one country may not generalize to different nations due to differences in political and cultural structures as well as ethnic composition. The reverse would also be true, in particular when the focus is on cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity. (Knight & Wiseman, 2005, p. 391) The view that generalization of studies across national contexts is limited was prevalent as recently as a decade ago. Perhaps for this reason, although it is difficult to determine the direction of the influence, schools and colleges of education have been the least internationalized units on U.S. university campuses (Longview Foundation, 2008). The consensus that preservice and inservice teacher professional development is specific to the national context influenced the kinds of articles published in JTE for many years. Only relatively recently has interest around issues of internationalization and globalization of teacher education emerged, resulting in a standing committee on Global Diversity and a Topical Action Group on the Internationalization of Teacher Education at AACTE and the establishment of a goal for JTE to attract and publish more international research on teacher education and encourage more readers in international settings. In contrast to previous views, we now consider research on teacher education in international settings as a valuable contribution and tool for improvement of teacher education in U.S. settings and suggest that the reverse is also true. Ironically, the recognition that international research can contribute to U.S. teacher education has occurred at a time when we are questioning whether teacher preparation programs should prepare teachers for multiple settings and types of students or for more specific types of settings and students. …