Transnational teachers in Australian schools: Implications for democratic education

• Published in: Global studies of childhood 2018-12, Vol.8 (4), p.404-414
• Main Author: Soong, Hannah
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cultural Maintenance; Cultural Pluralism; Democracy; Diversity (Faculty); Educational Change; Educational Opportunities; Educational Philosophy; Ethnicity; Faculty Mobility; Foreign Countries; Global Approach; Immigrants; Neoliberalism; Outcomes of Education; Refugees; Teaching Methods
• ISSN: 2043-6106; 2043-6106
• DOI: 10.1177/2043610618814907

While current debates on education for children from migrant background often focus on the prevailing problems of self-segregation and racialisation in Australian education, I take my point of departure from such perspectives to ask how the evolution of a burgeoning mobile teacher, who operates on a global scale, can matter to the distribution of educational opportunity and shape of democratic education outcomes for both domestic and overseas-born children. Consistent with the Special Issue, this article seeks to open a space for further research, to ask some old and some new questions about teaching for democracy. To examine how democracy can be fully realised in and through education, this article moves beyond problematising the dangers posed by globalised neoliberal school reform to attend to the cross-border flows of culturally and ethnically diverse transnational teachers in Australian schools. The article has two foci: first, it explores the role ‘transnational teachers’ have in education for democracy by understanding their place in the relations between education and access to sociocultural opportunities. Second, the article deploys a Deweyan approach to democracy and education, to argue for an education that is embedded in contexts, beyond than a locality, to incorporate sustained cross-border relationships and patterns of teachers’ social formation. Finally, the article details key pedagogical considerations for democratic education, moving beyond largely Eurocentric practices to include aspects such as generating diversity, cultivating transnational civic engagement, and advancing transnational aspirations of both teachers and students shaped by processes of globalisation.