Teacher innovation: Becoming a global educator in a rural school

The principal purpose of this study was to examine the adoption of innovative behavior that takes place when a teacher learns to become a global educator. The innovation or change took place during the implementation of global collaboration in a rural classroom setting with a small group of teachers. In this qualitative study, the researcher observed the teachers’ experiences while learning about global collaborations. The researcher looked at the phenomenon of rural teachers becoming global educators. The theoretical framework for this study was based on a theory developed by Thurlings et al. (2015) which is referred to as Thurlings' theory. This theoretical model was used as a lens to examine the behavior change that occurred with rural teachers as they learned how to become global educators. The researcher used four organizational factors, referred to as external factors, and three individual factors, called internal factors, as a lens to evaluate the research problem and research questions. The researcher found that the implementation of the innovation of rural teachers learning to become a global educator had three internal factors and three exteranl factors that made it successful. Additionally, there was one external factor that led to teachers getting frustrated and not completing the global collaboration. The internal factors that were prominate in the success of the innovative behavior were Personality, Trait, and Competence. The external factors that also led to the success of the innovative behavior were Actors and/or Relations with Other People, Facilities and Resources, and Task Factors. There was one external factor that hindered the innovative behavior, and that was Other External Factors, specficically the subcategory, Rules, Regulations and Policy.

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