Transforming Teacher Education
What Went Wrong with Teacher Training, and How We Can Fix It
Chance W Lewis editor Valerie Hill-Jackson editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Taylor & Francis Inc
Published:28th Apr '10
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Extracts from the text:"Why are fifteen million children and youth in poverty not achieving when we know that low-income students excel in the classrooms of “star” teachers (who comprise approximately 8 percent of the teaching force)?" "Whose needs or interests are being met in education reform today?" “In my own institution, there has not been a systematic assessment of the effectiveness of the basic teacher education program since the institution was founded over a century ago as a teachers college. Imagine, not one ever!”"Teachers who empathize with students and the life challenges they face soon realize that the dysfunctional bureaucracies will not permit them to meet the needs of their students. Half of the starry-eyed beginners are gone in five years or less." "Why does teacher education focus on the managerial, instrumental or delivery system aspects of the profession?""The expert advice dispensed by schools of education regarding what future teachers should do is not connected to any theory of learning, or to any reality of life in school classrooms." "Why has the recruitment process resulted in a cohort of teachers who are unable to connect with their students?""Does a qualified teacher equate to a quality teacher?""The best hope of getting more effective teachers from university teacher preparation programs is to base their budgets on the number of their graduates who serve in challenging schools and their effectiveness with children and youth. At the district level, the salaries of hiring officials should be based on how well these officials identify and retain quality teachers."In this book, 12 distinguished scholars provide a hard-hitting, thoroughly researched, historical and theoretical critique of our schools of education, and offer clear recommendations on what must be done to ensure all children can achieve their potential, and contribute to a vibrant, democratic society.
"Just as teacher educators strive to develop reflectiveness in pre-service teachers, this book asks teacher education programs to be honest in examining and understanding their strengths, weaknesses, constraints, and potential so that they may move forward. [This book] provides a thorough and complex consideration of possibilities for reinventing teacher education. Diverse, research based chapters approach transformation in teacher education from a vast range of perspectives and ask the reader to analyze and question how to transform teacher education. What with issues of teacher preparation and quality on the forefront of public discourse, there is need for the teacher education community to reflect on their practices in order to begin a challenging and necessary action-based discussion about how to better prepare teachers. This volume does not provide a single vision or easy answer, but it is an essential step forward."
Education Review
“Transforming Teacher Education is provocative, insightful, precise, and vital to our profession. Those whose lives intersect with teacher education will understand that this ‘must read’ text does more than merely encourage a transformative moment—it insists that a critical transformation is essential for the very survival of teacher education. The editors have masterfully assembled the writings of preeminent scholars to crucially examine the profession while constructing a focused vision for the future of teacher education.”
David Whaley, Associate Dean and Director of Teacher Education, College of Human Sciences
Iowa State University
“This volume is the one of most comprehensive and deeply analytical works on teacher preparation to appear in decades. As a teacher educator, I deeply appreciate this thoughtful and critical examination of the issues, dilemmas, and trenchant problems of teaching and teacher education in America. This is a work well worth reading!”
Peter C. Murrell, Jr., Founding Dean, School of Education, and Professor of Educational Psychology
Loyola University Maryland
“We need the best research, theories, and practices to make the kind of changes needed in the field of teacher education. This volume helps us take a major step in this direction. Breaking down the barriers to inter-district integration and reducing residential segregation, strengthening social justice education through critical pedagogy, developing teacher accountability policies and ways that will make teacher education programs more accountable, improving teacher candidate recruitment and induction, working through the contradictions of high stakes accountability and teacher quality —all tasks designed to improve the skills of teachers and policy-makers and improve the lives of students—are just some of the topics covered in this volume. Teachers, prospective teachers, educational planners, and policy-makers will all benefit from engaging this book. Hopefully they will engage the chapters with open minds, and begin to challenge ‘business as usual’ approaches to teacher education.”
Peter McLaren
University of California, Los Angeles
ISBN: 9781579224370
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 403g
292 pages