Internationalisation and Diversity in Preschool Teacher Education: Representations in Preschool

Student Teachers’ Projects

By: Ami Cooper

The desire to acquire education has been increasing at a very high rate over the recent years

across the globe. This is because the people are increasingly realizing the value attached to

education. Times have long gone when education was perceived as luxury. The findings show

that to develop students’ conceptualisations of internationalisation and diversity, a

reconceptualisation of the purposes and means of internationalisation in preschool teacher

education is needed. The analysis also showed difficulties in accounting for what students learn

from their international experience or in what way diversity is a resource. This could be ascribed

to the national context of education as well as the students’ understanding of the needs and

demands of the preschool. This, in turn, depends on how these issues are addressed in the

preschool teacher education. Many teacher educators lack resources and knowledge of how to

internationalise courses and curriculum (DeCuir, 2017). Special emphasis has been placed on the

role of schools in personal and human development, along with the need for greater

understanding of the diversity which makes the world. This means that teachers are now

expected to involve learners in the process of acquiring knowledge of their own culture(s) as

well as other cultures.

When teachers have access to continuous learning prospects and professional development

resources e.g. workshops, they are well equipped to become efficient teachers. Acquiring new

teaching strategies through professional development, make teachers able to go back to the
classroom and adopt adjustments to their lecture styles and curricula to better suit the needs of

their students. A clear, jointly developed and communicated understanding of

internationalisation and its importance to providing quality education is often lacking, even when

internationalisation is mentioned as a cornerstone in universities’ strategy documents. This

hinders the development of an internationalisation community-of-practice and shared

responsibilities in implementing internationalised education, even though such a community

would be the basis for the success of any comprehensive and lasting internationalisation.

Internationalisation as a comprehensive and purposeful approach is already successfully

established in research, whereas internationalised learning and teaching is often reduced to

mobility and language issues. It would be more fruitful to define it more broadly as an approach

aiming to equip teachers and students with a mindset, skills and competences geared towards

addressing global challenges and solutions, including measures to develop such a mindset

through course content and teaching methods.

Education is undergoing a major evolution. There is massive progress in the developments in

internalization in different educational arenas. This involve, teaching staff mobility, student

flows from one country or continent to another and the advancement of technology and teaching

curriculum that facilitates the learning process. Internationalization of education helps transfer

knowledge and skills among different countries of the world. People learn through exchange of

ideas and bringing up large group of students together from different nationalities can be of very

much benefit as far as this aspect is concerned.