Theorizing and Documenting the Spread of Teach For All and its Impact on Global Education Reform

Abstract

Within global education policy, the role of multilateral agencies in pushing crossnational policy borrowing is increasingly being complemented by efforts from private international networks within civil society, such as Teach For All. This introductory article summarizes the scarce extant literature on Teach For All, highlighting the contributions to this growing area of inquiry within this special issue. Especially provocative and fruitful lines of further inquiry surrounding Teach For All and similar policy networks are also highlighted and explored.

Alternative routes to teacher professional identity: Exploring the conflated sub-identities of Teach For America corps members

“…Programs associated with the Teach For All network-including Enseñá por Argentina, Teach for Armenia, Teach for Australia, and Teach for Austria, to name a few-now operate in more 45 countries around the world, and additional expansion plans are underway (Teach For All, 2018). Although these programs vary in the extent of their adaptation to the different sociocultural and political contexts in which they operate (Straubhaar & Friedrich, 2015), they share remarkable similarities in their structures, discourses, and ideologies, in that they generally recruit primarily 'highly-selective' recent graduates to complete condensed teacher training programs and 'close the achievement gap' (Blumenreich & Gupta, 2015;La Londe, Brewer, & Lubienski, 2015). Furthermore, and most closely connected to the focus of this paper, the programs themselves aim to strongly shape perceptions of what it means and feels like to be a teacher.…”

Portrait of a Teach for All (TFA) teacher: Media narratives of the universal TFA teacher in 12 countries

“…Teach for All plays an important role in global educational policy and governance networks. Founded in 2007 at the Clinton Global Initiative, Teach for All grew out of Teach for America in the US and Teach First in the UK (Straubhaar & Friedrich, 2015). Teach for All is the name for the umbrella network of various social entrepreneurs that adopt the Teach for All model in their particular countries (Straubhaar & Friedrich, 2015).…”

“…Founded in 2007 at the Clinton Global Initiative, Teach for All grew out of Teach for America in the US and Teach First in the UK (Straubhaar & Friedrich, 2015). Teach for All is the name for the umbrella network of various social entrepreneurs that adopt the Teach for All model in their particular countries (Straubhaar & Friedrich, 2015). This model rests upon the notion that educational inequality can be reduced by placing graduates from elite universities into schools that are designated as in "high need" (de Marrais, Wenner, & Lewis, 2013;Kavanagh & Dunn, 2013;La Londe, Brewer & Lubienski, 2015).…”

Global–local imbrications in education policy: Methodological reflections on researching the sociology of Teach for Bangladesh

“…What would that knowledge add up to in terms of methodology, theory and practice in relation to Bangladesh, but also to globalization? These questions gained traction particularly because similar studies with a specific focus on philanthrocapitalism and education policy have been conducted mostly in the developed world contexts (see Au and Ferrare, 2015;Elliott, 2018;Friedrich, 2014;Friedrich et al, 2015;Labaree, 2010;Lefebvre and Thomas, 2017;Smart et al, 2009;Straubhaar and Friedrich, 2015;Yin et al, 2019;Thomas, 2018bThomas, , 2018a. This body of literature, however, provided practical insights into how TFAll has materialized, particularly in its host countries, with prototypical idiosyncrasies.…”