World Yearbook of Education 2013

Book excerpt: Educators, professionalism and politics offers ways of understanding how and with what consequences national systems of education and the work of education professionals are being reregulated in the context of contemporary global transitions. Globalization does not just create transnational organizations, relations and practices; it also transforms nation-states by creating more complex education spaces that impinge on the work of educators and the learning that they enable, globally, nationally and locally. This volume of the World Yearbook of Education focuses firmly on the educators themselves. It documents the way educators encounter and renegotiate ideas and practices that travel globally as they seek to enact their established professional projects. This framing recognises that educators’ spaces, work and identities are historically anchored in national institutional trajectories, but are both disturbed and renewed as globally mobile ideas and practices "touch down" within national systems of education. The chapters examine the effect of global transitions on educators and education, and offers new perspectives on educational work in different parts of the world today. They challenge bleak assessments of teacher de-professionalization and idealistic narratives about professional development. Chapters highlight the significance of educators’ occupational boundary work and the resources and networks they mobilize through their professional projects as they make and remake education in national spaces. The volume tracks: Re-regulatory trajectories evident in national education spaces and their impact on educators; The way educators renegotiate globally mobile ideas, practices and national institutional trajectories, as they mediate global formations emerging in the national space; and The kinds of mediations and resources that enable education professionals to engage with the politics of professionalization. This volume of The World Yearbook of Education will be of great interest to Education researchers, graduate students, teacher educators and education policy-makers. Terri Seddon is Professor of Education at Monash University, Australia Jenny Ozga is Professor of the Sociology of Education at Oxford University, UK John Levin is Bank of America Professor of Education Leadership and Director, California Community College Collaborative, University of California, USA