Teacher Education and the Challenges of Global Economic Meltdown

The global economic meltdown is a serious worldwide malfunctioning economic activity that started in the United States of America in December, 2000 but became obvious in 2007 and fullblown between 2008 and 2009. The meltdown is characterized by drastic streamlining, rightsizing and downsizing of human and financial resources in both public and private sectors of the American economy. This paper sets out to identify the challenges the global economic meltdown poses to teacher education in Nigeria and also seeks means of handling such challenges. To have a broad understanding of the challenges the global economic meltdown have posed to teacher education, the next section of this paper highlights the meltdown as part of the global radical changes in environmental, economic, political, technological and social spheres since the beginning of this millennium. The paper concluded with recommendation of how teacher education can be made relevant for sustainable development.