Preparing For The Twenty First Century

Preparing for the Twenty-first Century

In The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Kennedy brilliantly showed how powerful nation-states have repeatedly fallen into the trap of "global overreach". Now he shifts his focus to the transnational forces that will confront and transform nation-states in the coming decades: the doubling of the world population, increasing environmental degradation, advances in technology, and more.

Preparing Teachers for the 21st Century

This book addresses two main questions, namely how to prepare high-quality teachers in the 21st century and how the East and the West can learn from each other. It addresses the different challenges and dilemmas that eastern countries, especially China, and western countries are facing with regard to teacher education. We explore the question by examining teacher education research, practice and policy in different countries, identifying both common problems and country-specific challenges. We then try to find valuable experiences, theories and practice which can solve specific problems in the process of teacher education, also addressing how local and global factors impact it. In this regard, our approach does not strictly separate pre-service teacher education from teachers’ in-service professional development, adopting an integrative perspective. Further, we believe the respective social and cultural contexts must also be taken into account. Lastly, we call for teachers’ knowledge and individual character traits to be accounted for in the education of high-quality teachers.

Preparing for the Twenty-first Century