Postcolonial Perspectives and the “Good Teacher”

Introduction: Good Teachers and International Schools

Pre-service teachers are entering a profession with a strong emphasis on educational quality, measured and compared in a system governed by market logics which function to affect the policies and emphases that govern the work of teachers. This has been particularly evident in the increasing focus on international competition through international standardized testing and measurement regimes and the comparison of outcomes. It is now the case that these kinds of metrics have become a dominant way of determining what a good education looks like and, subsequently, what makes one a good teacher. As the logics of the market economy have extended to, and intensified within, the society at large, education has not only become commercialized in regard to its production and delivery of knowledge but has undertaken to utilize market-based principles to make judgments on what can be counted as quality education and quality teaching. Indeed,...