The current historic COVID-19 Pandemic moment has thrown into sharp relief the need for flexible and rigorous higher education that meets upskilling and reskilling needs of global workforces. Discussions of micro-credentialing predate the Pandemic but have received increased focus as potentially assisting in addressing perceived skills gaps. However, not all commentators have been complimentary about the possibilities inherent in micro-credentialing. In this paper we discuss Ralston (Postdigital Science and Education 3:83–101, 2021) criticism of the “microcredentialing craze” as provocation to consider how equitable, thoughtful and just educative aims may be met. We address Ralston’s argument that micro-credentials present an educative “moral hazard” by arguing that micro-credentialing will allow universities to respond quickly to changing worker educational needs rather than only offering full degrees that may not be economically viable or personally desirable for individuals. Rather, we suggest, the potential of micro-credentials lies in their pathways and potential to enhance lifelong learning and suggest that micro-credentials do not stand outside of the pedagogical ethical imperative that learning experiences should be positive and inclusive.

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This article draws upon the cross-continental experiences of teacher educators in Australia, Germany, and the United States to contextualize and connect localized experiences in each country in the education and training of teachers as glocal phenomena. Through a glocal lens, the paper suggests that the dynamics working against the successful education and training of teachers are multifaceted, locally significant, and globally consistent. Two relevant areas are considered, resonating in both the local contexts of the authors and in their global reach, connectivity, and consistency: 1) internal university resistance and fighting over funding, status, and role and 2) over-reliance on market economies that depend on cheap labor fueled by nationalism, neoliberalism, and xenophobia. The authors address issues related to enrollment, reduction, and accreditation within university-based teacher education and training programs as particular areas of common complexity before yielding to discussion of the effects of those concerns situated within neoliberalism and neo-nationalism. The glocalized analysis and critical approach taken by the authors serve as foils to combat the negative scenario that encapsulates the education and training of teachers. Finally, questions are framed to help readers join in the broader discussion in their particularcontexts, extending the capacity for democratic dialogue.

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Curriculum initiatives with intercultural educative aims are not uncommon in many schools around the world. This paper argues that these initiatives and their classroom implementation by teachers is strongly impacted on, and influenced by, the prevailing neoliberal context of schooling. The findings of a project working with teachers on implementing the Intercultural Understanding General Capability and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures Cross Curriculum Priority of the Australian Curriculum are used to demonstrate the specific ways in which neoliberalism shaped and defined teachers' work. The neoliberal elements of consumption, individual responsibility, individuals being set adrift from values, surveillance and the illusion of autonomy are used to highlight teachers' approaches to understanding and implementing the curriculum elements in their science classrooms.Teachers in the study saw the potential for enacting social justice in terms of intercultural education in their classrooms but were often hampered in their efforts by prevailing neoliberal discourses influencing their own assumptions and actions, as well as those of the schools they worked in. It is only through interrogation of how neoliberalism impacts on intercultural educative aims that openings for counterhegemonic activities can be identified.