Internationalizing Teacher Prep & Innovations in Internationalization

Overview

The Longview Foundation builds purposeful partnerships between state government, NGOs, colleges of education, and communities to integrate global competence into teacher and student experiences to prepare them for tomorrow.

The Longview Foundation has made grants to support state coalitions of leaders in education, government, business, and non–profit organizations working to promote teaching about world regions and global issues in their states.

The tradition of supporting teachers and working with myriad policy and non-governmental partners to deliver high-quality international educational experiences to students.
Explore our work by topic or initiative below:
•    Innovations in Internationalization
The goals of this initiative are to increase teaching of international knowledge and skills in P–12 classrooms by stimulating state policy actions and program initiatives to enable expanded investments in international education and develop professional capacity to teach about the world.

We seek to weave global competence into the fabric of school and teacher experiences to engage and inspire the people living in them to want to connect more meaningfully to the world.
We believe that there are many catalysts for public dialogue and that making global–local connections and encouraging shared cultural experiences contribute to a sense of place and communal identity.

Our innovations work specifically supports strategic, field–building activities that help address gaps in knowledge or capacity. Advancement of global education in new and creative mechanisms is particularly of interest. Previous grants in this field have ranged from connecting schools with communities around international children’s literature to building professional development resources for teachers that internationalize the U.S. History perspectives taught in middle and high school.

•    Internationalizing Teacher Preparation for the Global Age: The Imperative for Change
This initiative highlights promising practices identified during this meeting and subsequent discussions and suggests a framework for internationalizing the education of all pre-service teachers and increasing the number of world language teachers, especially in less commonly taught languages. 

Teacher preparation programs that have been comprehensively internationalized ensure that the following actions occur:
•    General education coursework helps each prospective teacher to develop deep knowledge of at least one world region, culture, or global issue, and facility in one language in addition to English.
•    Professional education courses teach the pedagogical skills to enable future teachers to teach the global dimensions of their subject matter.
•    Field experiences for faculty and students support the development of pre–service teachers’ global perspectives and contribute the broader research base of the aligned strategic plan.
•    More teachers are prepared to teach less commonly taught languages and language education pedagogy is updated based on current research and best practice.
•    There are incentives, not barriers, to faculty at all levels engaging in this work.
In addition, since the publication of the report, the following elements have been identified as critical to comprehensive, sustainable internationalization for today’s teacher education programs:
•    Programs and courses are creating and utilizing formative and summative assessments to evaluate the effectiveness of new strategies in developing the global competence of prospective teachers.
•    Technology is integrated into the student experience to enhance instructional practice and to facilitate connections to the world.
•    Prerequisites for language study are in place and opportunities to build further proficiency and language application exist during students’ course of study.
•    Key partnerships locally, regionally, and nationally exist and larger reform initiatives tie back to campus and college’s strategic plans.
•    All work aligns to the global aspects of the college and campus strategic vision.

Grant application process has three stages, an eligibility quiz, a short form Letter of Intent, and a Full Proposal by invitation only.

Most grants will be between $15,000 and $25,000. 
Funding inquiry required - 01/16/2025
Invitation to submit full proposal - 02/20/2025
Full Proposal submission - 03/27/2025