ABSTRACT
This chapter takes up the question of how we might theorize teacher professionalism in relation to global processes and phenomena. I take the position that it is important not solely to conceptualize ‘the global’ as something ‘outside’ or as an external force or set of pressures that enter into a given cultural context or ‘local’ arena. Instead, we need to understand exactly how it is that certain ideas, practices and actors take on the aura of ‘being global’. Attention needs to be paid to the alliances that need to be built, the relations that need to be established, and the work that needs to be done so that a particular set of professional practices and discourses comes to be understood as having extra-local features that are potentially globe-spanning. We also need to think about how, in a recursive process, these become actualized in particular individual interactions and come to shape human lives.
