Imagined Globalisation in Italian Education: Discourse and Action in Initial Teacher Training

In this chapter, we explore the specificity of the Italian Initial Teaching Training (ITT) reform discourses as related to decentralisation politics in recent years. References to internationality explored in selected policy documents, influential books and some educational journals are assessed against institutional and historical developments. Therefore, this analysis attempts to explore forms of imagined (discursive) globalisation to seek out model states, examples abroad and more generally international knowledge which influence teacher training discourses. An analysis of the characteristics of Italian political culture and of its modernisation project as related to the English model will form part of our historical background. We will deal with an allegedly global trend in teacher education, which is perceived to be the neoliberal English model of controlled professionalism. After a more balanced phase between internationality and domestic tradition during the 1980s, the current Italian ITT discourse assumes a clear inferiority perspective as compared with other national settings. At the same time, however, it is clearly guided by what is perceived to be the most advanced and global model, i.e. the English model. In this paper we will argue that internationality is currently prominent over tradition in Italian debates on teachers and ITT.