Page 420 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

33 “What Is Ours and What Is Not Ours?” 395

The sun in the winter
looks like the moon
Has it lost its essence?

Ants collect and store food
A lazy caterpillar
makes them learn new techniques

Fifth, another disempowering feature of the comprador intelligentsia attitude is
to privilege the “realist agenda” (McLaren 2003) of mathematics teacher education.
Here, realist agenda refers to the hegemony of positivistic unidimensionality in
perceiving reality. Such a unidimensionality is characterised by the ethos of detached
observation of context, thereby privileging the standpoint of the observer. Coupled
with literalist language games and limited (i.e., often confirmatory) application of
“sense organs,” positivistic unidimensionality is an obstacle to accounting for the
layered nature of reality. Thus, the realist agenda is not sufficient for representing
various dimensions of reality embedded in the schooling context because it narrowly
conceives of what can be counted as real. On the contrary, having embraced a trans-
formative attitude, we shall not adhere to superficial realist agendas, rather we shall
look for agendas that are unique to our contexts. To do so, a transformative agent
can use multiple sources and referents to account for different perspectives and
interests of actors associated with teacher education.
Glocalisation: A Transformative Vision of Inclusive Teacher Education
Dear Dr. Director, as I have critiqued your narrow views of globalisation as univer-
salisation, I am morally bound to present an alternative vision. You may speculate
ironically that I will argue for a contextualisation that is guided exclusively by
easternisation (sic) and localisation. Well, as I have argued already, I am not in
favour of promoting unhelpful dualisms as they do not provide us with expanded
opportunities to think and act in multiple ways; instead, I opt for an inclusive way
of conceiving our teacher education program via a vision of “small glocalisation”,
which is taken to represent the dialectics of global and local processes, meaning that
glocalisation represents a continuous interplay and interactivity between globalisa-
tion and localisation (Kloos 2000).I do not claim that my view of glocalisation is
a grand-narrative; rather it is likely to rescue inclusive views of globalisation from
the longstanding western orthodoxy that often uses an exclusive lens to insert stra-
tegically its worldview in the name of universalisation (Swyngedouw 2004). Given
this conception, I have generated five empowering features of glocalisation: (a)
glocalisation can be regarded as an expression of dialectical relationships between
local and global practices; (b) it can be used to construct spaces called glocals,
which have the potential to generate empowering synergies between localisation
and globalisation (Doherty 2008); (c) it is likely to help us contest any form of
hegemony prevalent in mathematics teacher education; (d) glocalisation possibly
offers an inclusive and agentic vision for teachers and teacher educators to think
and act creatively; and (e) it can help preserve and promote a positive image of
globalisation as conversation (Henry 1999).