The new world educational order and the European Union: teacher education from principles common to the portuguese perspective

Abstract

In this work we delineate a route to understanding the elaboration of a text of European educational policy, the document Common European Principles for the Competencies and Qualifi cations of Teachers, while also striving to suggest connections with national political processes in the same fi eld. We argue that education and teachers are found under the fi re of an emerging agenda of global pressure that is translated into a plurality of orientations, among which are the democratic-professionalizing and competitive-technological projects of the masses, the conflict between which is as real as the discrepancy of the capacity of influence among the parties. These divergences have been recently manifest in Portugal, through proposals that take distinct directions for initial teacher education. We sought to clarify routes and processes, connections and disarticulations, emphasizing on one hand the strategic inscription of national policies on the global policies of the Union and on the other hand, the mediated, contextualized and nonlinear construction of the development of those policies in the reality of the country.