The Glocal Teacher: The paradox agency of teaching in a glocalised world

Abstract

The article presents the concept of rhetorical agency to understand and analyse the parallel and paradoxical agencies teachers are offered, and limited by, under discourses of globalisation within education. The paper identifies typical arguments, reactions, narratives and metaphors of globalisation. It discusses some of the consequences these have on the premises of teacher agencies locally, nationally and globally. The article raises normative questions on the kind of agencies that are necessary for teachers in an open and glocalised world. It suggests new interpretations of the bildung tradition as a constructive rhetorical agency to respond to and balance the needs of local, national and global interest in education.

Keywords

Open society globalisation educational policies curriculum glocal reform rhetoric rhetorical agency teacher teaching

Rhetorical agency

In classical rhetoric theory, rhetoric is considered an art, and a craft, of persuasion – to be used on an audience in a public sphere in order to achieve specific aims. In classical texts the rhetorician is given the ability to change the world by deliberate speech, to unite society and inspire action. This strong rhetorical subject can be seen as an archetype of an ideal teacher: a strong and knowledgeable subject using teaching as an art representing, structuring and delivering knowledge skilfully to pupils or students, fostering unity, keeping law and order in the classroom, and having the ability to inspire good attitudes and actions.

Post-modern theories of the subject, and modern discourse approaches, have brought forth many analyses of how the modern subject is far from being sovereign as speaker (Cooper, 2011). In many cases, speech is somewhat determined by different discourses governing thoughts, language and actions. Influential discourse approaches have been showing how discourses speak how discourses govern the speaker, the speaker, rather than showing communication as a result of skilful sovereign and strategic speech.¹

Both an exaggerated and over-optimistic rhetorical theory of the speaker’s sovereignty and a depressing deterministic discourse approach tend to underestimate the complex dialectic that lies between a governing discourse and a strategic subject. The concept of rhetorical agency is an analytical compromise allowing for analysis of determining discourse perspectives, and yet taking into consideration skilful and strategic rhetorical subjects (Geisler, 2004). Their influence on each other is an important analytical point (Cooper, 2011).

Greer’s definition of rhetorical agency is a constructive compromise. He defines agents as those with the ability to influence others. And they exist. In a rhetorical culture, agents influence; however, they are also being acted upon in various and complex ways by the rhetorical culture of the community. Agents are shapers and are being shaped. A rhetorical agency is possible only within a communicative practice of a given community (Greer, 2006).²

Rhetorical agencies are both limited and made possible by different discourses and their communicative practices (Trippestad, 2014). Discourses represent fundamental conditions for communication and performance. Within them lie authority, genres, common expectations and topoi that make communication effective and possible for the rhetorical agent. Although discourses can command and be powerful, they are also soaked with paradoxical, ironic or subversive possibilities. For an agent, it is possible to choose strategically within the many possibilities of a discourse. Discourses can allow for rhetorical creativity and, therefore, possibilities of developing or changing the discourse.³ A strategic agent can be enabled to choose between discourses strategically, when discourses are recognised and their functions understood.

To be a rhetorical agent as a teacher means to have the ability and capacity to influence others. Yet there are limitations. Language, traditions, texts and communicative practices can both enhance or limit their capacity to influence others. Teachers typically will be inscribed in a multitude of political and pedagogical discourses and, therefore, different and competing agencies are in direct controversy with each other, sometimes undermining their possibilities and sometimes strengthening their positions as agents. Agencies offered by political discourse should empower teachers, giving them effective rhetorical, ethical and social possibilities for powerful and effective communication to fulfil their given task.

This article tries to identify and discuss some central arguments, discourses and agencies of teaching in discourses of globalisation in influential educational texts. What rhetorical agencies do discourses of globalisation offer? What controversies, dilemmas and paradoxes can be identified?

Global teacher agency and the emergence of a new open society

Michael A Peters (2010) argues that there is an emergence confirm of an open science economy in the knowledge society, where science and knowledge are coming to life as global public goods. A new public sphere is in global creation. Open source models of knowledge, science and education have emerged as new and positive trends in the light of the crisis of neoliberal globalisation. Policies and innovations of open source, open access and open publishing are subversive and challenging to commercial business models of authorship and publishing, and are raising new questions of content development processes. New digital technologies create changes in production and consumption. In the scholarly field, they allow integrated new and electronic research models, open journals, cheap distribution and global access, to mention a few. They allow co-production, and real-time and dynamic update. According to Peters, this marks a new global public good that emerges out of global science and knowledge, and rests on an ethic of co-production and sharing of goods, services, opinions and knowledge.

To be a rhetorical agent of science, of global sharing and distribution of knowledge, is raising new ethical and democratic demands of teachers. It is an agency based on new technology, policies and economies of openness. Peters introduces the concept of ‘techno-political economy of openness’ in his article. He holds forth three elements which are overlapping and historically related: politics of openness, economics of openness, and technologies of openness. All of these elements have practical, political and normative implications in educational policy texts, and shape new rhetorical agencies of teachers.

Let me introduce an example that shows a combination of these concerns. In the Norwegian core curriculum, narratives that claim modern forms of analphabetism are introduced as a new potential social threat in the knowledge society. They are introduced as demanding challenges for schools and teachers. ‘Scientific analphabetism’ or ‘scientific illiteracy’ could be the result of the new global science and the vast amount of knowledge production and distribution. The government introduced vital curriculum goals to address the potential problems of globalisation and science dependency in society. Open technology, global mass culture, new economy and a politics of openness demanded a new agency of teaching. A vital part of this rhetorical agency of teaching was ethical and global democratic demands of educating pupils to be a part of an international culture of learning and to equip them for universal endeavours.

The flows between nations - of ideas and instruments, of capital and commodities, of materials and machines - have become more extensive, formidable and inexorable. Our environment is affected by the pollution of other countries, our industries are subject to competition in the world market, modern mass media direct a stream of news and views at everyone simultaneously.

All this poses many challenges to the task of education: to combine technical know-how with human insight, to develop a work force that is highly qualified and versatile, and to combine an international outlook with national distinction.

A research-based society risks becoming increasingly driven by technology. The flow of technological facts and findings requires learning to avoid “scientific illiteracy” – the inability to comprehend words like “gene splicing”, “ozone layer” or “immune system”, and what social consequences they augur.

Networks of information are continuously being augmented; networks that bind together firms and organizations, countries and continents, are constantly being built. […]Education must teach and combine technical know-how with human insight, to develop a work force that is highly qualified and versatile, and to combine an international outlook with national distinction.

The international culture of learning links humanity together through the development and use of new knowledge to better the human condition. Adults living now and the young growing up today must acquire the vision and wisdom which equip them for such universal endeavors, especially those that can help the world’s destitute. (KUF 1993, pp. 27–28)

These curriculum demands for primary and secondary education in Norway also affected teacher education deeply. There was a strong government demand for the training and involvement of teacher students in scientific methods and theory, the use of modern technology, and combining national teacher training with studies abroad, in an extended training, in order to address these education challenges.⁴

Together with the demand for the development of a global teacher agency, requiring sharing, global orientation and use of new technology, a quite contradictory demand was also introduced and, in particular during the 1990s, it became a demanding and strongly government-controlled agency.

The state as a state of mind: the teachers as state agents

A stronger emphasis on the teacher as a national rhetorical agent was implemented in the curriculum, together with the global agency. It was quite controversial. The agency of globalisation was a challenging, but rather free and open rhetorical agency for the teachers to interpret and enforce, with much autonomy, although with little support and backup from the government. The national concerns regarding globalisation, though, led to an impoverishing agency for teachers losing autonomy to centralised control over curriculum, teaching methods and subject matters. Teachers were expected to be scripted agents by a detailed national curriculum. A political counter-reaction to the politics of openness came in parallel with goals of mastering it. The double focus on both a global and a national discourse created paradoxical agencies for teachers. This paradoxical political reaction can be explained in light of Popper’s classical theory of the open society and typical counter-reactions “counteraction” through the text as suggested to it.

In The Open Society, Popper (1995) not only forms the arguments of the need for an open society, he also identifies typical reactionary reflexes and restorative policies that can emerge against openness and relativism (Trippestad, 2009). These counteractions are also interesting in understanding the kind of agency nation states try to implement on teachers as reactions to globalisation and openness. Popper diagnoses typical destructive or critical reactions to openness, which also seem to be traits of educational policies of the 1990s and 2000s in many countries. The first reaction is the political attempt to arrest change by values and cultures of the past. The other counter-reaction tries to control future development by planning, science and carrying out social experiments on a grand scale. Often these two come in combination. Popper names them both as utopian social engineering. Utopian engineering places strong regulations upon the agents to implement their discourses – either as being rhetorical agents of a tribal or nationalistic culture given the task of arresting development, or being scripted rhetorical agents of a quasi-scientific planning regime promising to lead countries into desired future states.

Popper claims utopian engineering to be an archetypical, philosophical, organisational and political reaction to Heraklit’s influx: the notion that all there is, is in movement, is changing or is in a state of transition. Knowledge, power or governing no longer have a certain, objective or sovereign ground on this epistemological ground. On the upside, this means a society more open to debate, democracy and individualism. But these paradigmatic intellectual changes also mean a more uncertain society. So openness creates tensions and feelings of risk in need of control. Such tensions can be easily identified in Norwegian policies of the last 20 years. But they also seem to be typical national responses to the openness of globalisation the world over.

According to an article by Wang Jianjun, these tensions seem to be an important experience with the ‘reform and opening-up policy’ in Chinese curriculum reforms:

During the 30 years after the ‘reform and opening-up policy’ was announced in 1978, curriculum reform in Mainland China has been continuously facing the tension between the demand of change pushed by the changing domestic and international context, and the cultural and ideological tradition – old and new. In fact, the past three decades have witnessed the formation of a new tradition in curriculum reform in China, that is, certain parts of the tradition are always carefully maintained under the name of ‘open’ and ‘change’, and the underlying desire of tradition-maintenance always makes certain change in practice cannot go any further before certain forms of ‘adjustment’ are brought up. (Wang, 2010, p. 1)

Wang is optimistic and suggests positive effects of this tension in the long run:

During the first decade of the 21st century, conflicts between change and tradition in curriculum reform have become so apparent that, after a famous fierce debate on the new curriculum reform which began from 2001, curriculum scholars, policy makers, and even school teachers are forced to re-think the old question: what kind of curriculum do we really need? (Wang, 2010, p. 1)

The attempt to arrest change is, according to Popper, often based on a notion of development and change as decay from an original shape or golden age of a society or a state. The typical goal of restorative policies is to bring society back to its original shape and/or its golden age. This is the arrested state, where development and movement are sought to be brought under control by the use of the ideals and values of the past. The safety of religion, collectivism, law and order, myths, traditions and group commitments are typical ingredients in these attempts to master the feeling of risk and uncertainty of an open society.

In the Norwegian educational policies of the late 1980s and 1990s, such reactions were typically a part of the rhetoric, diagnosis and policymaking. As reactions to Peters’ (2010) technologies of openness, one sees the emerging dramas and metaphors describing the existing conditions in policy documents as decay and threats. A clear withdrawal to religious and national metaphors, myths and authoritarian figures came into play. Political leaders were being constituted in over-rational or mystical positions of insight in the future over irrational people, pupils and teachers. The ideas lying behind the new curriculum in primary, secondary and adult education were expressed in a speech by the educational minister Gudmund Hernes in 1992, and have some of these traits.

Basis is difficult; we must govern by shaping the superstructure.

Let it be that people are what they eat, and that the farmer’s eyes are pointing to the ground. Let us give them spiritual food. Form a heaven over their everyday life and lift their spirit to a common sphere. For a nation is not a place, but a state of mind. […]

One belief gives one people. It is the mind that needs to be lifted and uniformed if the nation is to be kept together. […] We shall take on the task of building a nation and therefore need a common, firmer basis – the ground of a belief. […] If we are to secure the right faith, the faith must be one. Therefore we need curriculum. (Hernes 1992, p.36)⁵

In a foreword to the book Den digitale revolusjonen (‘The Digital Revolution’) Gudmund Hernes, the Church, Education and Science minister at the time, claimed that the geopolitical notion of the nation was weakened by the new technological revolution and the new global public. The significance of both time and place was reduced in opinion making. A political diagnosis within the regime reacted toward exactly the state Peters names as a techno-political economy of openness.

We are, in fact, in a new technological revolution, which again creates tension between the base and the superstructure. […] Technically, soon films, music, books, journals and papers can be directly distributed from producer to consumer. […] This reduces the economic significance of time and space. The systems that bind people together are not connected to physical space. People can, to an increasing extent, work anywhere; communicating independently of working hours, between organisations and across national borders. Radiowaves don’t stop at Svinesund [a national border crossing place]: a working place is not a place, but a state of mind. Well can we put coastguard ships against trawlers in Smutthullet [a sea border line in the north of Norway]. But the entire sky is full of all kinds of satellites. ‘The sky is blue for all’. Paradoxically, the monopolies the industrial revolution created are now being undermined by the technology the information revolution is creating. Therefore we have seen communication liberalisation in many countries. Funnily enough, it seems that people become more nationalistic the less the nation, as an organisation, is capable of being sovereign over the technology that shapes our lives. The problem is, therefore, how to gain sovereignty at a different level. (Hernes, 1995, pp. 25–30)⁶

On the basis of the diagnosis of globalisation causing a heterodox situation in the nation, an important political strategy of gaining central control over society, knowledge, national identity, common culture, association and references emerged. It was a politics of the new knowledge state and it was, in part, understood as a state of mind.

The teachers were required to be obedient and loyal rhetorical agents of it. First it emerged as demands on the teachers in the rhetoric of higher education. It was a typical restorative and conservative knowledge reaction. Knowledge policy demanded focus on core knowledge to control and arrest the negative effects of influx. One of the most important dramas and threats to govern educational policies was set up. It was the notion of the knowledge explosion. The new and massive production of knowledge threatened basic understanding, classical science and the common reference ground.

But new data and aged facts do not mean that knowledge is something of the past. On the contrary, basic knowledge becomes more important. The two-and-a-half-thousand-year-old Pythagoras theorem is still the most important tool for measuring land even if the instruments become outdated. […]

In short, the basic theoretical doctrines are decisive – both for interpreting new information and to govern the search for new facts. The better the theories are, the longer they last. And it is the terms, concepts, models and theories one is in control of that decide what can be understood of the unknown. Production of new knowledge makes it more necessary than ever to know these fundaments of understanding. The great stream of discoveries and findings demands basic knowledge – systems for understanding and action – now more than ever. Without this systemic knowledge, the knowledge explosion will lead to confusion and despair. The flow of ideas will be disorderly if the referential frames that can give them meaning are missing. (Universitets- og Høyskoleutvalget and Hernes, 1988, p. 9)⁷

A restorative and conservative view of knowledge, university ideas and a back to basics strategy was put forward as a strategy to meet the knowledge explosion. Only these could form a higher epistemological ground to hold the modern knowledge society together, to organise the growth in knowledge, and to control and tame the rapid shifts and transformations. It was both an orthodox and an idealistic reaction. The policy documents put forth core knowledge, traditional values, classical science and religious ideas of the past as key elements for controlling the modern flow. There are metaphors of place, architecture and construction symbolising order, solidity and stability against all the metaphors of shifts, disorder and movement that were given by the knowledge explosion and knowledge society.

There was also a discourse on new global mass culture and global media influence as a great threat to national unity and common opinion making, in the rhetoric of education during the 1990s in Norway.

The media technology cuts through national borders and spreads an international mass-culture. It creates common experiences and perceptions through news that spreads in real-time or through music or idols that becomes known as fast in Tokyo as in Toten. It can contribute to more openness towards other people and their lifestyles.

But when the world becomes one and the same public, that is related to a global monoculture, the question of national uniqueness and cultural preservation are raised in a new and radical way. The media development does not only give communication possibilities, but also emphasises problems for our entire educational system.

With closer technological connections across countries, and more intense communication, it becomes a more interesting and challenging task to take care of and develop our local traditions – the history and uniqueness which are the different countries’ contribution to the cultural variation of the world […] In the same way the knowledge explosion demands stronger concentration on basic and core knowledge, and common scientific values, internationalisation demands that we give importance to our own culture to preserve the diversity in the world community. (Universitets- og høyskoleutvalget & Hernes, 1988, p. 16)⁸

Such a classical political reaction to influx can also be clearly identified in the curriculum texts for primary and secondary education.

When transitions are massive and changes rapid, it becomes even more pressing to emphasize historical orientation, national distinctiveness and local variation to safeguard our identity – and to sustain a global environment with breadth and vigor. A good general education must contribute to national identity and solidarity by impressing the common stamp from local communities in language, tradition, and learning. This will also make it easier for pupils who move to find their footing anew, as migration will mean relocation within a familiar commonality. The bonds between generations will be closer when they share experiences and insights, stories, songs, and legends. Newcomers are more easily incorporated into our society when implicit features of our culture are made clear and exposed to view. (KUF, 1993, p. 29)

The central government took a firm grip on curricula, teaching methods and curriculum development in the 1990s. The motive of creating a common reference and association ground for all the people through the national curriculum was clearly expressed and exemplified under the heading ‘Common References in a Specialized Society’ in the core curriculum.

It is a central tenet of popular enlightenment that such frames of reference must be the common property of all the people – indeed must be an integral part of the general education – to escape differences in competence which otherwise can result in social inequality and be abused by undemocratic forces. […]

Those who do not share the background information taken for granted in public discourse, will often overlook the point or miss the meaning. Newcomers to a country, who are not immersed in its frames of reference, often remain outsiders because others cannot take for granted what they know and can do – they are in constant need of extra explanations.

Such common contexts, references for understanding, encompass historical events (“The 9th of April”), constitutional principles (“The Division of Powers”), the classics of literature (“Peer Gynt”), cultural idioms (“The camel and the eye of the needle”), or the symbols used on weather charts. Without possessing these common reference points - that make it easy to decipher and decode, to construe and relate, and hence, to communicate effortlessly - one can become alienated in one’s own country.

Without comprehension of these overarching paradigms, it is difficult for ordinary citizens - non-specialists - to participate in decisions that deeply affect their lives. The more specialized. and technical our culture becomes, the more difficult it will become to communicate across professional boundaries. Common background knowledge is thus at the core of a national network of communication between members of the community. It is the common frames of reference, which make it possible to link what one sees, reads or hears, to a shared, tacit mode of thinking. It makes it possible to fathom complex messages, and to interpret new ideas, situations and challenges.

Education plays a leading role in passing on this common background information – the culture everybody must be familiar with if society is to remain democratic and its citizens sovereign. Education must, therefore, provide the fertile soil for cultivation of coherent knowledge, skills and outlooks. (KUF, 1993, pp. 26–28)

The role of teachers as rhetorical agents of a national cultural state was emphasised. The nation state was to be understood as a state of mind. The political discourse set up a rhetorical agency in a detailed curriculum bound by law. In the chapter ‘The role of the teacher and educator’, the teacher is portrayed as an agent with both capacity and skills to persuade. And this agency should be a national agency, using the capacity to deliver national tradition, myths, history, religion and heritage forcefully upon pupils.

The teacher’s command of his or her field is vital when the experiences of the young are to be converted into insight. The good teacher is master of the subject – his or her section of our common cultural heritage. […]

To explain something new implies mooring it to something familiar. This is accomplished by the teacher using expressions, images, analogies, metaphors and examples which convey meaning to the pupil. New perceptions must build on what is already well founded – that which the pupil already knows, can do or believes beforehand. A good portion of this the pupils have in common, from our broad cultural heritage which provides a sounding board for communication, dialogue and learning.

The cultural baggage that learners carry with them, from the home, local community, or earlier schooling, determines which explanations and examples have meaning. Pupils from other cultures do not share the common Norwegian heritage. Good teachers, therefore, use many and varied images to make a point or demonstrate a common pattern, and draw material and illustrations from the diverse experiences of different pupils. Further, a good school places emphasis on broadening the pupils’ common store of associations because it aids simple and succinct communication. (KUF, 1993, p. 20)

While the global discourse is narrated as threatening, the national discourse is given rhetoric of stability, order and responsibility. The local is given mostly an instrumental value as pupils background needs to be taken into consideration when explaining other and higher forms of knowledge, as building blocks toward a higher national – and then global – understanding, and as a mere pedagogical tool in the hands of the skilled teacher.

Teacher agency as structuring well-tempered selves

The political concern regarding the riddle of globalisation versus the national and the local is not a typical Norwegian trait. Ken Robinson – government advisor, for different countries, on education and change – clearly expresses such concerns on behalf of a lot of governments in his famous animated speech in 2010.

Every country on earth, at the moment, is reforming public education. There are two reasons for it. The first one is economic. People are trying to figure out: How do we educate our children to take their place in the economies of the 21st century? How do we do that given that we can’t anticipate what the economy will look like at the end of next week? […] The second one is cultural. Every country on earth is trying to figure out: How do we educate our children so they have a sense of cultural identity and so that we can pass on the cultural genes of our communities while being part of the process of globalisation? (Robinson, 2010)

One answer to this riddle is the notion of shaping the pupils’ personalities or skills to master the drift and shifts of globalisation and knowledge society. In Norwegian policies, this motive had already been expressed in the 1990s.

Since the topography of society – its basis – split the nation, we in the council of the king need to unite. The grip of the statesman must be this; what is dissolved by the natural infrastructure, we need to correct by affecting the structure of the personality. (Hernes, 1992, p.36)⁹

New right wing governments and the new reform in 2006 – Kunnskapsløftet (‘The knowledge lift’) – removed, in part, the detailed curriculum and decided to focus more on the development of basic skills and competencies of pupils. They gave schools more freedom to develop their own local curricula. A teacher agency of developing basic skills and competencies in pupils was demanded: an agency to develop skills to master and deal with the flow of globalisation under surveillance of national testing and accountability regimes.

Another, but similar, mastery strategy of the global drift can be found in Britain. In his famous speech on Britishness, Tony Blair put forth ‘unchanging’ values to master a changing world; a rediscovery (or reconstruction) of an open British identity and common self-interest as instrumental keys to release the potential and solve the problems of the nation state in a globalised world.

We are living through a period of unprecedented change. The exponential growth of information and communication technologies is transforming the world’s economies and making them increasingly interdependent. The breakup of the postwar international order and globalisation are calling into question systems constructed around the nation state. New ideologies of personal liberation and opportunities for self-fulfillment, made possible by social and economic change, are transforming traditional social structures and turning some inwards to themselves, rather than looking outward to the nation and the state. […] What is the answer to such a challenge? Not to retreat into the past or cling to the status quo, even if it cannot sensibly be justified; but to rediscover, from first principles what it is that makes us British and to develop that identity in a way in tune with the modern world.

What makes Britain and Britishness important, valid, as necessary today as ever is a powerful combination of shared values and mutual self-interest. We are stronger together, economically and politically with the nations of the UK able to maximise their collective will and authority. In defence, foreign policy, economic weight, we are better off and stronger together.

But, more important, our identity is not threatened by change. Our identity lies in our shared values, not in unchanging institutions.

[…] Likewise, at a time when individuals have been becoming increasingly empowered in their personal lives and increasingly aspire - and rightly so - to the prerogatives of citizenship, how could a healthy body politic defend the political privileges of hereditary peers, and deny the right to freedom of information and to the protection of the European Convention on Human Rights in British courts?

I believe few would disagree with the qualities that go towards that British identity; qualities of creativity built on tolerance, openness and adaptability, work and self-improvement, strong communities and families and fair play, rights and responsibilities, and an outward looking approach to the world that all flow from our unique island geography and history. (Blair, 2000)

Arguments such as these form teacher agencies that are quite paradoxical in what sort of personalities, skills and identities teachers are to structure and implement in pupils. Let me also give you an example from the Norwegian curriculum that is quite contrasting to the demand for stability, identity and community.

Education shall qualify people for productive participation in today’s labour force, and supply the basis for later shifts to occupations as yet not envisaged. It should develop the skills needed for specialized tasks, and provide a general level of competence broad enough for re-specialization later in life. Education must ensure both admission to present-day working and community life, and the versatility to meet the vicissitudes of life and the demands of an unknown future. Hence, it must impart attitudes and learning to last a lifetime, and build the foundation for the new skills required in a rapidly changing society. It must teach the young to look ahead and train their ability to make sound choices. It must accustom them to taking responsibility – to assess the effects of their actions on others and evaluate them in terms of ethical principles. (KUF, 1993, p. 5)

While national cultural and identity politics seeks stability, roots, national feelings and community, the rhetoric of the market and the economy demand a flexible individual adapting to an ever-changing environment. Toby Miller (1993) analyses these paradoxes in the formation of the individual in his book The Well-Tempered Self. According to Miller, we are in a cultural-capitalistic state which is dominated by two major discourses. First, a capitalistic-economic discourse that has change, development, profit and wealth as its themes. This discourse identifies and produces individuals who are utilitarian and selfish, who are trained to seek profit and are willing to adapt to the ever-changing environment of the market. Under metaphors of marketing, corporation, development, production and consumption, identities as employed, employer and consumer – a creative, flexible and changeable individual – are set up for the citizen to develop, in order to expand the economy.

On the other hand, there is a political discourse that tries to produce citizens who are moral, with feelings of community and societal spirit, both in the public sphere and in private life. Stability, cultural identity, and recognition of the community of politics, its institutions and representations are central themes within this discourse. Miller points out that these paradoxical discourses have important functions in forming a well-tempered and docile self. According to Miller, the state needs to produce a sense of oneness among increasingly heterogeneous populations because political systems are under question by new social movements and the internationalising of cultures and economics. The state works to create loyalty to market economics, to parliamentary democracy and a sustainable society through the formation of cultural citizens who can be docile and efficient participants in this cultural-capitalistic state.

For Miller a key concept of this global cultural-capitalistic state is to implement a feeling of ethical incompleteness in the individual. The individual is trained to strive hard within the different discourses and is invited to unite the contradictory discourses in his/her personality. The subject goes on an endless seminar with itself and in the reflection process will be managed to manage himself (govermentalitè). Teacher agency, in the light of these discourses, will be an agency of structuring personalities and skills to fit both the economic and the cultural-political discourse, and training individuals in reflections to implement ethical incompleteness so that the individual is managed to manage himself in this mix.

The teacher as a bildung agent

Influential sociologists have critically challenged the promotion of globalisation as being a mere positive force and constructive social process for most humans. Zygmunt Bauman (1998) claims that powerful stockholders from global economic, corporal and political institutions promote globalisation in self-interest. Bauman brings forth the voice and experience of the marginalised in globalisation: those on the outside of globalisation, far away, in the outskirts – striving, in their everyday lives, for basic wants and needs. Bauman points at new inequalities and injustice created through globalisation for new and large groups, for certain countries and areas. Globalisation can leave areas and people behind in disorderly, jobless and hopeless environments. Globalisation can dismantle religious traditions and national institutions, often with devastating results on individuals, nations and groups.

Christopher Lasch (1994) claims that there is a threat to democracy and the nation state in the globalised age. This threat does not arise from the mob, public or people within the democracy or the nation state but, rather, from mobile and global elites not bound by limits of nation, nationality, time or space. These modern elites refuse to accept traditional limits being inflicted upon them. New economic and meritocratic elites create their own networks and instiuitions, often with competing or challenging ambitions and goals of the nation, their culture and the people in it. The challenges of globalisation to the nation state are a concern that need to be considered carefully. As analysed by Benedict Anderson (1991) in his classic Imagined Communities, one has to be ambivalent of the national state. On the one hand, it has created disasters like no other institutions in history. On the other, it has handled challenges of education, economy, health, identity, culture and community with a success like no other institution. A globalisation dismantling important national institutions could have a devastating impact on important public welfare systems, identity and community makers.

We might formulate our global experience so far: that we have had a global discourse without necessary institutionalisation to deal with its full potential and problems. The nation state reacts to it in quite a schizophrenic way. Elites can misuse it. It can create an unbalanced and inharmonious globalisation, with the potential to leave large groups behind – challenging cultures, identities and nations in a potentially destructive way. This is the challenge for creating global educational cooperation, sharing and understanding between countries, educationalists and cultures. A strong belief in globalisation underestimates the still important functions of the nation state. On the other hand, nation states react in a quite schizophrenic and insufficient manner to the many facets of globalisation.

Roland Robertson (1995) introduces the concept of glocalisation in his classic ‘Glocalization: time–space and homogeneity–heterogeneity’. According to Robertson, the term ‘glocal’ is a blend of both the local and the global. It sprung out of the business jargon of the 1980s. The idea of glocalisation was connected to micromarketing – tailoring and advertising goods on a global basis to increasingly differentiated local and particular markets. Robertson criticises the polarised concept of the global and the local, and invites the reader to a more dynamic understanding of the concept. I am here inspired by his challenge to see the local in the global and the global in the local.

A glocal educational teacher agency and philosophy must be built upon respect for the individual and the local, with an understanding and respect of the history, political and cultural institution of a country or state, while, at the same time, realising a common universal understanding, interconnectedness and humanistic potential of globalisation. All these are necessary in an international corporation of education. ‘The glocal teacher’ is a vision of such an educational institution. The philosophy of glocal teaching draws its influence from the bildung tradition in European educational philosophy, from public theory and from ancient roots in Greek philosophy.

The bildung tradition focused on education along three normative lines (Slagstad, Korsgaard & Løvlie, 2003). The first was the thought of an education that enabled the pupil to develop himself when encountering means that could have good educational effect on the character. The goal of education should be to get the individual to develop personal judgement, autonomy, self-decision and self-activation, and have the courage to use the judgement to come out of self-inflicted and unenlightened helplessness and powerlessness (Løvlie, 2009). This thinking reminds us of the Confucian thought of the relation between learning, reflecting and action.

The importance of stimulating the teachers and students in such a way has been a trait developed through different periods in Chinese educational reforms, and the results have been characterised by Prof. Xioawei Yang as an undoubted leap in quality:

The past thirty years witnessed a very clear picture of the teaching reform: the focus switched from knowledge and skills to the non-intelligence factors such as interest and affection, then to the “3D-Objectives” in the New Curriculum reform, and finally to the multiple educational values of the subject teaching in the perspective of school reform (Ye Lan, 2003). The fundamental value of teaching is to enhance every student’s independent, initiative and healthy development, and every specific subject and comprehensive curriculum should demonstrate its unique irreplaceable values. In other words, every subject would produce a unique influence on individuals’ spiritual growth, because it presents facts and knowledge, contains the methods and strategies of thinking, and brings students some unique experience during their learning. Compared with the “combining-knowledge-and-spirit”-oriented principle once advocated in some subject teaching, the emphasis on the comprehensive educational value of the subject is undoubtedly a qualitative leap. (Yang, 2010, p. 5)

Xiaowei Yang promotes an even stronger emphasis on these internal aims of education in the future as a key factor in the perspective of lifelong learning that is needed in the future. He says:

The public and parents value Enrolment Rate so much that we accordingly tend to neglect the internal aim of education – to promote the foundational qualities of every individual and help them to acquire the ability to teach themselves. Therefore, we have to rethink the value orientation of the school reform, and re-examine the gains and losses of the teaching reform against it. In the future reform, we must pay more attention to the fostering of the non-intelligence factors and general abilities such as interest, aspiration, habits and character, which are beneficial to lifelong learning, so as to realise the potential role of the basic education as the foundation of students’ lifelong learning and development (Yang, 2009). This new orientation may become a new focus and direction of the teaching reform in mainland China. (Yang, 2010, pp. 6–7)

The Chinese experience and results, as described by Yang, should inspire Europe to revitalise its bildung tradition. The combination of spirit and knowledge, in the bildung tradition in Europe, was believed to be achieved through stimulating the individual in his local surroundings to meet and use art, tradition, history, music and literature in the development of a wise and comprehensive judgement. The local, by this thought, is a vital ingredient in a rhetorical teacher agency – to foster and inspire pupils to local self-empowerment, personal judgement and action in a global age. The local can be a window to the global. As pointed out by the English philosopher Francis Bacon: A wider horizon is often seen by looking at the landscape through a small window than by standing in the wide landscape trying to see what is behind all the small windows. Sharing local knowledge openly and globally brings voice, variety and difference to globalisation.

The second principle of the bildung philosophy was enlightenment of the individual in relation to society and ethnos – to the people, culture, history and political institutions one was a part of. This implied an agency of teaching giving knowledge and skills to pupils to understand and cultivate one’s own community and nation state – its traditions, language, music and art (Herder, Humboldt, Schleiermacher) and the political institutions, laws and contracts of society (Rousseau, Kant). This rhetorical agency needed to encourage the use of personal judgement, rationality and speech in respect of and relation to a national, common cultural, public or political sphere. It is relevant to see how this must be a vital ingredient today in a glocal teacher agency. It means an agency of preserving the variety of culture and traditions among nations in a global age, and also inspiring and training pupils for public life. It means an obligation to take care of well-functioning institutions and functions of the nation state, intrepid in the face of new challenges, and to develop them.

In a globalised age we are not only inhabitants of a nation state, but live also as a world citizen in a globalised world. The teacher, therefore, must be an agent of the world citizen, to educate pupils of the common nature of human and human potential. A glocal agency must recognise common global threats and challenges, and create connectedness and understanding between personal, economic, cultural and national boundaries to develop mankind with a common respect for each other. It must be grounded in humanity and the universal human condition.

The individual and the local can be found in the universal. In-between nations and the state, we can find universal or commonly desired political or economic conditions or solutions. And in the global, the particular and the local can be focused on.

The glocal teacher, in the light of a bildung tradition and the globalisation era, must teach the students the personal and the local, the polis and the common culture, and the global and the universal, to create a harmonious and balanced education. It means viewing the public, pupils and students as placed in a multitude of overlapping meanings and texts, technologies and messages (Silverstone, 1993) implied in the personal, local and global meaning and, at the same time, empowering them to be meaning creators and to use their judgement in all spheres.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Tom Are Trippestad is a PhD in science theory, professor in pedagogy and former director of Centre of Educational Research at Bergen University College, Department of Teacher Education. He has a wide experience of research leadership in a variety of disciplinary fields. He was a lecturer in pedagogy, rhetoric and science theory in teacher education for 10 years. His research has been in the area of science theory, educational policy, reforms, governing text and curriculums, rhetoric, pedagogical philosophy and teacher professionalism.

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