Abstract:
Building the capacity of pre-service teachers to work in globalised cross-cultural
environments is essential to cope with the challenges of the 21st Century. This study
establishes the value of internationally paired, authentically collaborative practicums with
strong epistemological and positional framing in pursuing such capacity development. It was
conducted among 90 pre-service teachers from three different universities in Australia and
India who participated in a three-week paired practicum in three schools in India. The
practicum included the collaborative production of an integrated Australian and Indian
combined theme presented in a whole school forum. Mixed methods and a design-based
research approach yielded data affirming that such a model did indeed provide pre-service
teachers with the confidence to teach in increasingly diverse classrooms and contexts, while
also identifying which aspects of this practicum model were most influential in this regard
