Comparative Education, Border Pedagogy, and Teacher Education in an Age of Internationalisation

Calls to internationalise higher education have intensified in recent years, particularly as educational services have grown to become a significant export industry within the Australian economy. This measure is indicative, however, of the relatively narrow way in which internationalisation has been constructed, and its political utility in compensating for declining public investments in education, particularly under the Howard government. In this paper we explore the possibilities for challenging such conceptions by taking a comparative education approach to teacher education. We position this approach in terms of a "border pedagogy" that requires teacher educators, and their students, to acknowledge the historical, geographical and temporal nature of knowledge and identities, through international comparative work, such that their own identity and professional knowledge is more authentically internationalised.