The Importance of Teacher Education in Global Education

Introduction

Teacher education is recognized as a vital component in economic competition and growth (Tang, 2015). In teacher education, where learning from theory and practice is combined, student teachers also need to regulate their learning (Endedijk, Vermunt, Verloop, & Brekelmans, 2012). Regarding both demographic changes and evolving school instructional policies, many teachers experience an increasingly wide range of student learning differences regarding academic, behavioral, physical, and cultural perspectives in their classrooms (Munthe & Rogne, 2015). This concern significantly requires teacher education that helps teachers become the innovators and researchers in education, laying the educational foundation for the continuous learning and the practical change in the workplace (Brouwer & Korthagen, 2005).

The use of technology in teaching requires the integrated knowledge among technology, pedagogy, and subject content, and this highly blended knowledge is developed through the methods courses of a teacher education program toward improving preservice teacher's technological skills (Zhou & Xu, 2013). Preservice teachers are required to enroll in the instructional technology courses in partial fulfillment of graduation requirements (Blankson, Kyei-Blankson, & Keengwe, 2012). Educational technology experiences in teacher education programs should place the heavy emphasis on learning the content-specific uses of technology that can be transferred to future classroom experiences (Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2012). Teacher educators concerned with building technology-rich preservice teacher education seek inspiration in many places (Norton & Hathaway, 2012).

The primary way of enhancing teacher quality is to base teacher education on the issue of robust research (Cooney, 1994). Educational change, such as shifts toward technology-rich teaching and learning, will only be successful with a concerted change effort in teacher education programs (Hughes, Gonzales-Dholakia, Wen, & Yoon, 2012). Preservice teachers’ professional vision is an important indicator of their initial acquisition of integrated knowledge structures within university-based teacher education (Stürmer, Könings, & Seidel, 2015). The 21st century practices and ethical approaches regarding technological utilization are important and should be added in the teacher education program to prepare preservice teachers. Goeze et al. (2014) stated that the ability to analyze and understand the classroom situations can be recognized as an essential aspect of teachers’ professional competence.

It is very important to prepare teachers with an education model that develops the pedagogical and psychological skills and supports them to effectively operate in a perspective of lifelong learning (Selmo & Orsenigo, 2014). Teacher quality and educating high-quality teachers have emerged as the fundamental problems to be solved by nations since the correlation between education and economy is becoming more apparent, and the principal factor in student achievement is teacher quality (Cochran-Smith, 2008). Teacher quality has been a continual issue in the field of education (Wang, 2012). When measurement procedures are introduced into the education system to improve the quality of its teaching force, the beginning teachers often have to adapt to these new concepts of what constitute a high-quality teaching (Goh & Wong, 2014).

This chapter aims to bridge the gap in the literature on the thorough literature consolidation of teacher education. The extensive literature of teacher education provides a contribution to practitioners and researchers by explaining the advanced issues of teacher education in order to maximize the educational impact of teacher education in global education.