Abstract
In 2019, reforms in four countries were elucidated and their trends were compared. The analysis of the cases revealed that the USA and Brazil were engaged in change efforts that seemed deleterious to what teachers and students desired, while Portugal’s reform initiative was less interventionist, but still significant. As for Canada, the impact of its presented reform proposal was more positive, particularly in comparison to the Brazilian and American exemplars, where the countries were going to great lengths to standardize curriculum, instruction, and assessment according to the neoliberal agenda. In this Encyclopedia chapter, the authors pick up from where they left off in their international analysis. This work captures what happened when the global pandemic spread unfurled and turned everything on its head, including teaching and teacher education and national and international comparison testing. Additionally, what some perceived as a single pandemic was described by others as four pandemics involving (1) health care, (2) economics, (3) climate, and (4) educational disparities (Ladson-Billings, Equity Excell Educ 54(1):68–78, 2021). What happened to school reform and teacher education immediately prior to the global pandemic and just after it occurred is what this four-nation policy comparison chapter will focus attention on. Additionally, more satisfying reforms, reform policies, and approaches to teacher education will be entertained in the aftermath of the global crisis.
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Acknowledgment
The authors of this chapter thank Kaelyn Parks from Texas A&M University who served as the research assistant for this chapter. The second author would like to acknowledge the funding of the research by CIEC – Research Centre on Child Studies of the University of Minho – project under the reference UIDB/00317/2020 and UIDP/00317/2020 through national funds of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).
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Craig, C.J., Flores, M.A., Marcondes, M.I., Ciuffetelli Parker, D. (2023). Cases of Four International Reforming Contexts: Prelude to the Pandemic and Beyond. In: Menter, I. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Teacher Education Research . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16193-3_76
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