Global influences and national education policy: perspectives from Croatian pre-service and primary education teachers

Global processes influence the course of changes in national education policy, and similar reform trends are observed worldwide. Therefore, the first part of the paper provides a brief overview of the main characteristics of global education policy. The aim of this paper is to examine the attitudes of Croatian teacher education students and primary education teachers towards the influence of globalization on national education systems and policies as well as to assess their self-perceived competence to teach global topics. For this purpose, a special questionnaire was created, and a survey was conducted among 113 students and 86 teachers in 2024. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to identify statistically important differences. The results show that the respondents are aware of the influence of globalization and international organizations, especially the European Union, on national education policy. The influence of the European Union on the Croatian education system is mainly perceived as positive. Teaching foreign languages is one of the main characteristics of global education policy, as well as the fact that globalization has created more possibilities for studying abroad and student exchange. The respondents agree that ‘brain drain’ is the negative consequence of globalization and that education reforms only partially take national values and interests into account. Regarding the self-assessment of competences in teaching global topics, respondents consider themselves most competent to teach about human rights, global inequalities, democracy, and civil society. A lack of competence is noticeable in teaching on modern migrations, and energy to some extent. The results of this research can be used to modernize the programme for teachers’ education. The paper contributes to geographical research on the mobility of educational policies between different spatial scales (from global to national).