Chapter 1 ‘Third Wave’ Politics in Teacher Education: Moving Beyond Binaries Colette Alexander, Jillian Fox, and Tania Aspland Abstract Teacher educators live and work in a highly complex world that is mediated by multi-layered political, social and educational arenas. While education typically falls with the jurisdiction of nations or states, the influence of globalising factors and forces on teaching, teachers and teacher education is steadily increasing. The shrinking of the globe through the movement of people and ideas continues to intensify in response to technological advances including social media. This chapter provides an analysis of the influence of global trends on the local work of teacher educators. Globalisation is defined and the contestations that emerge at the intersec- tion of the global with the local and the political with the educational are discussed. Historical influences of global forces in teacher education are explored and explained as two ‘waves’, the first focused on providing sufficient quantities of teachers, and the second shifted focus to the quality of teachers, teaching and teacher education. It is proposed that teacher education needs to enter a ‘third wave’ to effectively respond to contemporary global political contexts. This new model describes the political work of teacher educators as productive, personal, possessive, pragmatic and philo- sophical. It considers how teacher educators can respond to political agendas whilst working towards educationally and socially responsible educational practice for all learners. The model is applied to thinking about the projects included in the book, Teacher education in globalised times: Local responses in action, to bring to light the deeply significant political work being undertaken across global-local boundaries. C. Alexander (B ) · J. Fox School of Education, Australian Catholic University, Banyo, QLD, Australia e-mail: Colette.Alexander@acu.edu.au T. Aspland Kaplan Australia and New Zealand, Sydney, NSW, Australia © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 J. Fox et al. (eds.), Teacher Education in Globalised Times, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4124-7_1 1