Section archive - Trends in Teacher Education

This paper presents an analysis of teacher professional standards from five of the most culturally diverse nations in the English-speaking world. The authors examine how culturally and linguistically diverse learners and culturally responsive pedagogy are positioned, and what the standards stipulate teachers should know, and be able to do, in fulfilling their professional obligations. Based on this analysis, the authors conclude that the teacher professional standards do not acknowledge, let alone make explicit, the complex and specific knowledge and skills needed for culturally responsive teaching.

This article aims to examine the field of teacher preparation in the current era of accountability and testing. The authors claim that policymakers try finding ways to improve teacher preparation, hence they use assessment tests. This article shows an evidence that teacher preparation is in the forefront in its use of outcome measures to gauge the effectiveness of its work. The authors suggest that nuanced use of these assessment measures, in ways that don’t over assume their validity, should be the approach taken as this innovation evolves.

The present paper explores the growing role of venture philanthropy. It also investigates the ideas of educational entrepreneurship and disruptive innovation in influencing the federal and state policies and practices in teacher education in the United States. The authors reject the position that the USA government should invest in the current system of teacher education in order to increase the capacity of the existing institutions that currently prepare teachers. They also disagree with the position that the current teacher education system should be replaced by an alternative based on deregulation and privatization. They suggest the need for transformation in the present system of teacher education, which will improve the quality of teacher education programs. They suggest focusing on helping student teachers learn to enact teaching practices that will promote student learning.

In this paper, the author argues that a holistic and interdependent view of these aspects is needed. Thus, this paper aims to explore the process of teacher learning from a holistic perspective. Through deliberative discussions and selection, 13 ‘good’ teachers were interviewed in this study. The findings indicate that there may be a two-stage pattern (the II-VA model) that describes two different sorts of teachers. The first sort refers to those teachers who developed strong identities before beginning their teaching service and who tended to have a clearer educational vision which had a direct impact on their practices and professional development. As for the second sort, the teachers’ identities were vague in their first years of teaching, but their professional identities gradually developed within the referential community with affective and professional functions.