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This paper examines the current focus on teacher policies and practices by a range of global actors, and explores what this means for the governance of teachers in national education systems states. Through an historical and contemporary reading of the ways global actors seek to govern teachers, I argue an important shift in the locus of power to govern has taken place. I show how the mechanisms of global governance of teachers are being transformed, from 'education as (national) development' and 'norm setting', to 'learning as (individual) development' and 'competitive comparison'. Yet despite tendencies toward a convergence of agendas amongst these global actors, we can nevertheless observe important differences between them, as well as on the national settings influence. I conclude by examining the limits and possibilities of governing at a (global) distance, as well as the contradictions and cleavages inherent in neoliberal framings of teacher policies to realise the good teacher.

This paper outlines the basis of an alternative theoretical approach to the study of the globalisation of 'education' -a Critical, Cultural Political Economy of Education (CCPEE) approach. Our purpose here is to bring this body of concepts -critical, cultural, political, economy -into our interrogation of globalising projects and processes within what we will refer to as the 'education ensemble' as the topic of enquiry, whose authoritative, allocative, ideational and feeling structures, properties and practices, emerge from and play into global economic, political and cultural processes In the first half of the paper we introduce and develop the concepts that will underpin our approach. In the second half of the paper we explore the explanatory potential and epistemic gain of a CCPEE approach by examining the different manifestations of the relationship between globalisation as a political, cultural and economic project and an education ensemble. We conclude by reflecting on the possibilities this perspective offers.

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