Internationalisation, teacher education and institutional identities: a comparative analysis

Teachers are under increasing pressure to promote various and many times conflicting and fluid sets of values—both global/local—cosmopolitan and national. Teachers are expected to possess meaningful skills, theoretical grounding and practical tools to effectively undertake this role. One way in which to prepare teachers for this, is through internationalisation of teacher education (IoTE). Teacher education programmes are situated within a distinctive niche between higher education (HE) and schools and are expected to both compete with other local/global HEIs and to engage with and supply graduates for the local (often, national) education system. This distinctive position requires teacher education programmes to foster multiple constituencies and identities. In this study, we aim to explore these multiple identities, and how they shape IoTE. We investigate how internationalisation is expressed in two teacher education colleges in Israel. Drawing on internationalisation and organisational identity literature, we explore the role of organisational identities and how multiple organisational identities are negotiated and shape IoTE. We reveal two distinctive strategies, aggregation and compartmentalisation, employed to manage multiple organisational identities. We argue that these divergent strategies produce different forms of IoTE and are closely tied to the institution’s conception of the nation.