Teacher education and internationalisation: Policy ideas and practices in Finland and Sweden

Preparing student teachers for work in increasingly diverse Nordic schools has brought attention to the value of internationalisation that, until recently, was debated primarily in other disciplinary contexts within higher education settings. In this article, we examine how internationalisation is introduced and integrated in two teacher education providers in Finland and Sweden. Drawing on internationalisation as a policy idea with distinct cognitive and normative properties, we explore rationales, values and attitudes that underpin internationalisation positions and practices. The comparative study identifies different ways that the two providers introduced internationalisation into their existing practices, and, to some extent, different meanings and emphases internationalisation has in the two institutional settings. In both cases, the filtering of this policy idea and its embeddedness into teacher education is contingent upon curricular and organisational structures; university and faculty leadership; attitudes and commitments of academic staff.