Operationalising global education in teacher education and training: A model for contextualising terminology

Abstract Despite a growing international consensus that students need to be provided with the type of education that effectively prepares them to engage in and contribute to their globalised world, and that teachers need to be appropriately trained to facilitate this teaching and learning, ‘global education’ continues to be hindered by a lack of clarity and/or credibility. Contributing substantially to this issue is the use of a variety of terminologies, each with nuances as to its origins, inclusions and perceived intent. Thus, a Delphi style approach was undertaken with 15 international expert teacher educators from 15 different international contexts to determine which terminologies they use, and how they use them to operationalise ‘global education’ in their contexts. The study included individual interviews, focus groups and participant reflections. Although ‘Global citizenship’ emerged as the most frequently used term, there was consensus amongst the experts that the nuances of any term must be examined to avoid the dangers of oversimplification, with a compromise between time spent on definitions and practical operationalisation. Based on analysis of the data, this article proposes a model with 38 actions to support teacher educators to implement global education into their teacher education programmes so that teachers in turn can prepare their students to effectively engage in and contribute to our globalised world. The model is original as to date none exist and significant, in that it provides a concrete scaffold for teacher educators.