Chapter 5: A Peer-Led-Teaming Approach to Improving Science Teacher Educators’ Efforts In Internationalizing Science Teacher Preparation within Rural-Serving Programs

“Science is global,” a statement by Dr. Anthony Jackson, Vice President for Education and Director of the Center for Global Education in Asia Society, powerfully acknowledges the interconnectedness of various worldwide problems (Jackson, 2014). Climate change, population growth, pandemics, and pollution are a few of the many issues that may manifest in our local communities and have global significance. Globally focused science education has the potential to have our students examine those complex issues and learn how to communicate with people different from themselves while finding ways to act locally and globally. The world has increasingly changed due to issues, conflicts, and cultures that transcend borders (Kopish et al., 2019). However, many of our teacher preparation programs have been resistant to change and have not yet met the demands of a global society (Kopish et al., 2019; Parkhouse et al., 2015). This reality has led many educational agencies and professional organizations to issue calls for preparing young people for a globalized future (Kopish et al., 2019). Although this is a reality for all teacher preparation programs in general, we believe it is a particularly urgent issue for those of us that prepare a significant number of teachers for rural schools, as many of the districts our graduates enter are often overlooked for professional development reform-focused initiatives.