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Teach For America (TFA) has left an indelible mark on education in the United States and worldwide through its expansion via Teach For All. A considerable body of research examines the impact and experiences of teachers who enter the profession via TFA and related organizations, including the ways in which they embody controversial policies and new forms of teacher expertise and professionalism. Scant research, however, has examined the experiences of non-TFA teachers who work alongside them. This instrumental case study draws on interviews with nine non-TFA teachers working in traditional public schools to explore their experiences of interacting with TFA teachers at their schools. The findings focus on the perceived inexperience of TFA teachers as well as the labor expended by non-TFA teachers in support of these novice teachers. The paper also examines experiences of TFA teacher attrition and its impact on other teachers, students, and staff at the schools. The paper concludes by discussing the significance of this study and related research across individual, institutional, and broader structural levels.

Alternative teacher education programmes have emerged in many countries as a new approach to recruiting, educating and placing teachers in underperforming schools. The media plays an important role in framing perceptions of these programmes and their teachers, including in Australia, but this has not been the subject of significant research to date. This study examines how one alternative teacher education programme--Teach For Australia (TFAus)--has been positioned and framed within the news media since its inception. It critically analyses the portrayal of TFAus and concomitant educational discourses to explore their connection to larger issues surrounding teacher education and teaching quality. Drawing on an analysis of 122 print/online media articles, we identify narratives related to prestige, benevolence and the 'alternative' nature of the programme, alongside a narrative critical of TFAus. Despite this critical narrative, in investigating and opening up a dialogue on the perceptions and depictions of TFAus, we posit that the programme--although controversial in nature--has generally benefited from print media coverage, advancing its reputation as a major contributor to education reform and champion of educational equity.

Teach For All (TFAll) is global network of programs based on Teach For America. Since 2007, TFAll has spread to more than 60 countries and had a considerable impact on educational policy across educational jurisdictions. Scant research, however, has examined 'shadow' programs based on this model but unaffiliated with TFAll, such as Teach For Taiwan (TFT). This paper engages in a critical policy analysis of TFT and examines both its emergence and (mis)alignment with educational policy. Our analysis first highlights the inspiration and support TFT has drawn from TFAll and its affiliate programs, despite its unofficial status. The paper then examines how TFT is aligned strategically with recent policy shifts toward deregulation in Taiwanese education. We also find that TFT is misaligned with key educational structures, including the national salary scale for teachers and teacher education system, resulting in a new category of transient teachers who are uniquely positioned in the teaching roles they assume but largely unable to continue teaching beyond TFT. We argue that more attention within education policy studies should focus on the impacts of (un)official TFAll programs -- particularly given their disproportionate power and positioning to effect global educational change -- and their (mis)alignments with national systems.

Global movements to decolonise sociology have gained significant momentum in recent decades and offer far-reaching implications for the field of education. One understudied area of research, however, concerns the sociologies of education taught and experienced in teacher education outside of Anglo/European contexts. This paper uses post-/­decolonial theory to explore the teaching and learning of sociology of education for pre-service teachers at the University of Zambia. It draws on data from surveys (n = 318) and five focus groups with pre-service teachers (n = 20), a focus group with tutors (n = 3) working on the course, and reflections by course lecturers to examine Zambian pre-service teachers' experiences and perspectives of sociology. We argue that a sociology of education which includes some elements of the classical canon but is grounded more firmly in sociological perspectives related to local social issues, contexts, and epistemologies may lead to a more informed and inspired cadre of pre-service teachers, and by extension, citizens.

Teach For All (TFAll) is a global network dedicated to cultivating its unique brand of fast-track teacher training and policy reform. Launched in 2007, TFAll programs now exist in 60 countries--including Ghana, Nigeria, and Uganda--and utilize particular discourses to recruit teachers, court donors, and support ongoing operations. Scant research has focused on TFAll programs in Africa or the spatialized discourses of the network itself, however. This study draws on critical and multimodal discourse analyses to explore the discursive utility and deployment of the "global," "local," and "national" by TFAll and three of its African affiliate programs. Our findings suggest the "global" is depicted as expansive, universal, and progressive; the "local" is peripheral, authentic, and a site for humanitarian gaze; and the "national," though often elided, is framed by patriotic yet apolitical discourses, when invoked at all. We posit that these spatialized discourses help legitimate the work of TFAll organizations.

This article provides an analysis of contemporary comparative research on pedagogy, as published since 2000. It explores this sub-field of comparative education inquiry over this period, including how it has responded to new global movements, changing balances of power, and methodological advances. While these have shaped the field in recognisable ways, differing responses to these among researchers from contrasting research traditions have resulted in divergence as well as convergence. This divergence has created distinct typologies of studies that reflect particular epistemic communities of researchers, depending on how context and the purpose of research are perceived. The scoping review is based on a survey of 51 articles identified through a systematic search of 10 English-language journals in the field of comparative and international education.

Research on the development of professional identity for teachers who enter the profession through alternative routes is still in its infancy. In contrast to their peers who complete traditional initial teacher education programs, these teachers are exposed to different conditions and constraints that produce a range of sub-identities previously unidentified in the literature. This paper draws on interviews with 27 teachers who entered teaching through Teach For America and wrestled with these sub-identities as they considered their emerging professional identity. We argue that these sub-identities point to structural challenges embedded within Teach for America, and we highlight the need for additional research on the growing cadre of teachers entering the teaching profession through alternative routes, and subsequently influencing policymaking processes.

In this paper, we critically interrogate the way in which comparative and international education coursework at two large institutions in Australia and New Zealand embody or challenge teleological, colonial, and Western/Northern-centric perspectives on education and development. Embedded within a broader and introspective examination of our roles as comparative and international educators in these universities, we deconstruct the intent behind our course objectives, readings, lecture content and assessment tasks, and place them into conversation with our own pedagogical self-reflections, observations of practice and student feedback. In doing so, we highlight ways in which we believe we are beginning to prepare a new generation of more critically conscious, and regionally-minded set of teachers, development practitioners and researchers. Specifically, by "making the familiar strange," and encouraging our students to co-construct knowledge, we argue we can begin to create actionable spaces which encourage an alternative reading of the world; something colleagues from across Oceania and further afield have long argued for as part of the decolonizing process. We also highlight how this process has led us to better recognize our own positionalities and epistemologies as CIE educators, in hopes that it can lead to an ongoing space for dialogue between educators and researchers within and beyond the region.

Overseas placements are promoted in many tertiary institutions as a valuable component of undergraduate programs. Institutional ethnography, as a mode of inquiry that begins in the actual doings of people, was employed in this study to understand preservice teachers' perceptions of their learning from an innovative model of overseas placement. In this paper, we explore an 'epistemology of experience' facilitated by the features of this model; the 'live-in' nature and intensive mentoring provided by university academics. We argue that overseas placements, overly restricted by regulatory authorities, can make a valuable contribution to initial teacher education at the theory-praxis nexus.

This study utilised institutional ethnography to inquire into the lived experiences of 15 Australian pre-service teachers (PSTs) who completed an international professional experience in Indonesia. The PSTs were privy to a unique cultural experience, one grounded in an epistemological stance that differed considerably from their own. Despite completing substantial pre-service teacher education coursework prior to travelling to Indonesia, the PSTs became more acutely aware of how school students, teachers, and community members may operate from varied ways of knowing. As such, in this article we argue that international professional experiences have the possibility to guide PSTs towards newer and deeper explorations of epistemologies, a process of paramount importance in preparing future teachers to work effectively and appropriately in diverse classrooms.

This article utilises narrative inquiry as a means to explore reflexively our roles as two scholars/teacher educators with extensive experience in education and international development initiatives in East and Southern Africa. It focuses on a teacher professional development program in Tanzania we helped initiate and facilitate for more than five years whose aim was to promote more critical, learner-centred approaches to teaching across the country's secondary school curriculum. We narrate several key incidents from the program that led us to examine our complicity in establishing and maintaining the very hierarchies of knowledge production and dissemination the program sought to challenge. Throughout, we engage reflexively with postcolonial theory in an effort to provincialise the Anglo-American assumptions about pedagogy implicit in learner-centred approaches to teaching that form a key aspect of contemporary global education reform.

Alternative teacher education programmes associated with the Teach For All network are emerging worldwide. Largely inspired by Teach For America, these programmes draw on the meritocratic vision that 'one day' all children will receive a high-quality education and fulfil their potential. This paper questions the underlying ideology of meritocracy as evident in two Teach For All affiliate programmes -- Teach for America and Ako Matatupu: Teach First New Zealand. By drawing on qualitative data collected from across both programmes including interviews with participants and stakeholders, this article explores the ways in which meritocratic discourses undergird each programme's mission and are subsequently voiced by participant teachers. Findings suggest that, despite significant differences in socio-political and economic contexts, strikingly similar discourses surface. We argue that the meritocratic ideologies evident in both contexts promote narrow definitions of 'achievement', disillusionment among teachers, and a general obfuscation of inequality.

In addition to its influences across economic, geopolitical, and social spheres, globalization has given rise to the notion of a 'global citizen' who is able to understand a shifting and more internationalized world while moving fluidly through it. Education has been trumpeted as the means to achieve this globally-aware citizenry, leading to an entire field of global citizenship education (GCE). Here teachers are the linchpin, yet understandings of globally-focused coursework in teacher education remain underdeveloped. This paper explores the 'global' within core courses in initial teacher education in Australia and interrogates the kinds of 'citizens' to be cultivated. We begin in our pilot study by canvassing university courses across Australian Group of Eight universities, and locating more global aspects of the courses, where available. Based on initial findings, we offer a dual-axis conceptual framework for guiding an 'alternative future' for GCE within teacher education. We then use the framework in a focused coding of one teacher education syllabus as an exemplar of its potential utility for examining the ways in which future teachers are encouraged, or not, to engage with broader geopolitical, sociocultural, and economic forces of globalization in the PreK-12 schools in which they will eventually teach.

Background/Context: Teachers enrolled in alternative training and licensure programs may have experiences that lie outside what is considered typical for both preservice teachers and in-service teachers. This article explores the experiences of a growing cadre of "synchronous-service teachers" -- including, but not limited to, Teach For America (TFA) corps members -- who are teaching full time while also completing coursework in teacher preparation programs. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of the Study: This study considers how synchronous-service teachers perceived the education and training they received while enrolled in traditional teacher education coursework, as well as how they interpreted their broader interactions with the teaching profession and teacher education writ large. Research Setting and Participants: This research was conducted in the Midwestern United States in a major metropolitan area with a TFA regional presence. Thirty-six corps members who completed coursework at a traditional teacher education institution opted to participate in this study. They were primarily White and female, and most entered TFA immediately following completion of their undergraduate degrees. The majority had little previous exposure to the education discipline. Research Design: The thirty-six corps members were interviewed about their experiences while participating in TFA, teaching at their schools, and, especially pertinent to this article, learning at a partner university where TFA corps members in the region completed teacher education coursework. Findings/Results: The findings suggest that corps members held primarily negative views about the teacher education coursework they experienced. They complained that the teacher education programming failed to provide immediately applicable insights and lacked rigor and relevance. Yet they also maintained paradoxical expectations about what teacher education, particularly for synchronous-service teachers, should or should not entail. Conclusions/Recommendations: The article concludes by suggesting the potential utility of synchronous-service teachers as a conceptual category, noting that these teachers should be considered distinct from others. As such, providing synchronous-service teachers with teacher education programming designed for either preservice or in-service teachers may lead to missed opportunities in terms of professional learning and exacerbate negative sentiments about teacher education. The experiences and opinions of synchronous-service teachers can have considerable significance, particularly when these teachers go on to affect education leadership and policy. In sum, teacher education institutions are at a critical crossroads concerning how and whether to proceed with similar partnerships, especially as alternative recruitment and training programs continue to grow in the United States and beyond.

Research on Teach For America (TFA) continues to grow, but scant scholarship has explored the experiences of its corps members working in special education in urban schools. As teachers who require in-depth knowledge of legal and liability processes as well as effective pedagogical practices, corps members in special education positions have significant demands placed on them that often lie beyond the roles and responsibilities of other TFA teachers. This article therefore focuses on the experiences of five TFA corps members placed in special education as it explores their critical reflections about the minimal preparation and support they received from TFA. In light of recent special education initiatives launched by TFA, the article raises questions about the continued involvement of TFA in the field of special education and its ability to adequately prepare corps members for the unique responsibilities served by special education teachers in the United States.

This article explores two distinct strategies suggested by academics in Tanzania for publishing and disseminating their research amidst immense higher education expansion. It draws on Arjun Appadurai's notions of 'strong' and 'weak' internationalisation to analyse the perceived binary between 'international' and 'local' academic journals and their concomitant differences in status. In an attempt to examine critically how the status quo regarding knowledge production in higher education is maintained and reproduced, the article explores interactions between a Tanzanian academic and an educational researcher from the global North, including the ways in which research collaborations between academics from different contexts and material conditions in their institutions may both advance and inhibit professional development of academics and comparative education research, "writ large." The article concludes with a call for comparative education researchers to carefully consider the future of educational research in sub-Saharan Africa and the complexities of continued involvement in knowledge production processes.

This paper examines the pressures experienced by teachers as they strive to embody the Teach For America (TFA) motif of 'relentless pursuit'. It draws on interviews conducted with 36 teachers and uses a Bourdieuian analysis to consider the mechanisms of control manifested through socialization and corps member habituation. The findings suggest that corps members experience both symbolic and self-imposed overt violence as they aim to meet the demands of TFA. This has implications for the increasing number of teachers in programs around like TFA as well as the broader discourses of teacher accountability and the teaching profession.

Over the past three decades, two neoliberal educational reform efforts have emerged in tandem - the charter school movement and Teach For America (TFA). This paper critically examines the relationship between these entities through the lens of TFA corps members placed in charter schools, and explores two types of schools described by interviewees, namely, "shit shows," and "like-minded schools." Grounded in corps members' teaching experiences, this paper argues that even at its best, the close partnership between TFA and charters can create a mutually reinforcing educational subculture that is isolated from broader educational discourses and practices. At its worst, this partnership can result in the ill-advised "propping up" of under-funded, mismanaged, ill-equipped charters that might otherwise struggle to find adequate staffing and, consequently, close. This paper suggests that these two tendencies--toward corps members' insularity and poor placement--have the potential to conflict with the charter movement's and TFA's stated purposes of improving the quality of schooling for disadvantaged and marginalized students.

Teach For All (TFAll) is global network of programs based on Teach For America. Since 2007, TFAll has spread to more than 60 countries and had a considerable impact on educational policy across educational jurisdictions. Scant research, however, has examined 'shadow' programs based on this model but unaffiliated with TFAll, such as Teach For Taiwan (TFT). This paper engages in a critical policy analysis of TFT and examines both its emergence and (mis)alignment with educational policy. Our analysis first highlights the inspiration and support TFT has drawn from TFAll and its affiliate programs, despite its unofficial status. The paper then examines how TFT is aligned strategically with recent policy shifts toward deregulation in Taiwanese education. We also find that TFT is misaligned with key educational structures, including the national salary scale for teachers and teacher education system, resulting in a new category of transient teachers who are uniquely positioned in the teaching roles they assume but largely unable to continue teaching beyond TFT. We argue that more attention within education policy studies should focus on the impacts of (un)official TFAll programs – particularly given their disproportionate power and positioning to effect global educational change – and their (mis)alignments with national systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alternative teacher education programmes have emerged in many countries as a new approach to recruiting, educating and placing teachers in underperforming schools. The media plays an important role in framing perceptions of these programmes and their teachers, including in Australia, but this has not been the subject of significant research to date. This study examines how one alternative teacher education programme—Teach For Australia (TFAus)—has been positioned and framed within the news media since its inception. It critically analyses the portrayal of TFAus and concomitant educational discourses to explore their connection to larger issues surrounding teacher education and teaching quality. Drawing on an analysis of 122 print/online media articles, we identify narratives related to prestige, benevolence and the 'alternative' nature of the programme, alongside a narrative critical of TFAus. Despite this critical narrative, in investigating and opening up a dialogue on the perceptions and depictions of TFAus, we posit that the programme—although controversial in nature—has generally benefited from print media coverage, advancing its reputation as a major contributor to education reform and champion of educational equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an analysis of contemporary comparative research on pedagogy, as published since 2000. It explores this sub-field of comparative education inquiry over this period, including how it has responded to new global movements, changing balances of power, and methodological advances. While these have shaped the field in recognisable ways, differing responses to these among researchers from contrasting research traditions have resulted in divergence as well as convergence. This divergence has created distinct typologies of studies that reflect particular epistemic communities of researchers, depending on how context and the purpose of research are perceived. The scoping review is based on a survey of 51 articles identified through a systematic search of 10 English-language journals in the field of comparative and international education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to its influences across economic, geopolitical, and social spheres, globalization has given rise to the notion of a 'global citizen' who is able to understand a shifting and more internationalized world while moving fluidly through it. Education has been trumpeted as the means to achieve this globally-aware citizenry, leading to an entire field of global citizenship education (GCE). Here teachers are the linchpin, yet understandings of globally-focused coursework in teacher education remain underdeveloped. This paper explores the 'global' within core courses in initial teacher education in Australia and interrogates the kinds of 'citizens' to be cultivated. We begin in our pilot study by canvassing university courses across Australian Group of Eight universities, and locating more global aspects of the courses, where available. Based on initial findings, we offer a dual-axis conceptual framework for guiding an 'alternative future' for GCE within teacher education. We then use the framework in a focused coding of one teacher education syllabus as an exemplar of its potential utility for examining the ways in which future teachers are encouraged, or not, to engage with broader geopolitical, sociocultural, and economic forces of globalization in the PreK-12 schools in which they will eventually teach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article utilises narrative inquiry as a means to explore reflexively our roles as two scholars/teacher educators with extensive experience in education and international development initiatives in East and Southern Africa. It focuses on a teacher professional development program in Tanzania we helped initiate and facilitate for more than five years whose aim was to promote more critical, learner-centred approaches to teaching across the country's secondary school curriculum. We narrate several key incidents from the program that led us to examine our complicity in establishing and maintaining the very hierarchies of knowledge production and dissemination the program sought to challenge. Throughout, we engage reflexively with postcolonial theory in an effort to provincialise the Anglo-American assumptions about pedagogy implicit in learner-centred approaches to teaching that form a key aspect of contemporary global education reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]