Knowledge Mobility is the New Internationalization

Ted Purinton is senior education advisor for the Economic Development Board of Bahrain with special secondment as the Dean of the Bahrain Teachers College.Jennifer Skaggs is vice president for student life and associate professor at Gordon College.

Schools of education in the United States are becoming parochial and localists. Partly, this is a response to the crisis of democracy and the need to promote models of social justice helping minorities achieving cultural and economic outcomes. Partly, is the result that identity politics reifying a culture of group identity and displacing traditional forms of distributive justice in capitalist societies. Moving from distribution to identity struggles has been a challenge to the earliest trends of internationalization which, different from simply models of globalization--as this book claims-- focused on the flow of knowledge across borders and the borrowing and learning strategies for policy change. This process was implemented via traveling faculty, cross-national publications, and new metrics, and culminated with information access given the construction of the Internet. This relevant book argues that there is a new internationalization surge which came about with the rise of global university rankings, the employment imperative of globalization, and the prestige of academic mobility. Because globalization often serves as a catalyst for neo-liberal economic and labor policies, these changes affect the nature and role of schools of education, even in top-of-the-line universities that claim to be global in nature. These contradictions are carefully analyzed and criticized in this book drawing from compelling theory and meaningful case studies challenging the way our schools of education in the United States are trying to overcome their own demons. This book by Ted Purinton and Jennifer Dickinson Skaggs about the new internationalization is a must-read and refreshing contribution.

• Notes on TerminologyIntroductionChapter One: The Inevitability of Globalization in EducationPart One: Internationalization in Higher EducationChapter Two: International Identity or International Quality: What is an International Education?Chapter Three: Global Aspirations: The Strategies for the Internationalization of Higher EducationChapter Four: Following Their Peers or Forging Their Own Way: The Internationalization of Faculties of EducationPart Two: Professionalization of Education and the Role of Faculties of EducationChapter Five: Advanced and Advancing Educational Systems: Global Metrics, Mindsets of Reform, and the Supporting SectorsChapter Six: Academic, Practical, or Both: The Problematic Past and Promising Future of Faculties of EducationChapter Seven: Local or Global Knowledge: The International Foundations of Professions and Professional EducationChapter Eight: Global Quality Academic Leadership: How Academic Leaders of Faculties of Education Can Inspire Global RelevanceP