Mobile Teachers: Becoming Professional Mobile Educators in the Marketization of Education

Abstract

The movement of educators, from local systems into international education systems, underscores an increasingly important development in the internationalization of education. The chapter explores the experiences of educators creating mobile careers in education by working outside their local education systems. Drawing on Urry’s (2004) concept of mobility, this chapter explores the mobile professionalism of teachers working outside their local and national education systems. The chapter aims to theorize the concept of mobility as it applies to teaching professionals as they shape their professional and private spaces to construct mobile professional identities, knowledge, and practices. The chapter will explore case studies of eight mobile educators with an aim to capture their mobility trajectories. These trajectories will be critically discussed as a way to explore both the motivations that drive educators to become mobile and the meanings that shape their knowledge and practices as they negotiate successive international contexts. Shaped by the vastitudes of cultural and gendered identifications and variegated agency, mobility has differentiated consequences for teacher professional identities, career trajectories, and professional practices. The mobility of educators presents challenges for teacher education what counts as their professional knowledge in the “disorganized capitalism” of international education.