Knowledge, Policy and Practice in Teacher Education reviews the evolution of education policy on initial teacher education as an indicator of the knowledge that is considered important for nation building. It also looks at research on approaches and structures to initial teacher learning as an indication of the intellectual and moral direction to which schooling must aspire. Contributors look at these dynamics across a range of societies including Australia, the Czech Republic, England, Finland, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, and the USA. Using a review of the literature approach within a comparative framework, the book seeks to answer the following questions for each country: What has been the evolution of different approaches to learning to teach in each setting, and what factors have influenced change over the years? What are the underlying theories that characterize past and current thinking about the knowledge, skills and dispositions needed by teachers and what evidence is used to support these theories? What does a review on the state of the knowledge about teacher education over the past 30 years reveal about the evolution of the research and knowledge traditions that have supported current and past innovations in teacher education? Maria Teresa Tatto and Ian Menter explore international variability in different conceptions of knowledge in the context of learning to teach and explore the way in which national and international influences interact in the developing trajectories of teacher education policy and practice, considering what knowledge is considered important for teachers to have.

"Knowledge, Policy and Practice in Teacher Education reviews the evolution of education policy on initial teacher education as an indicator of the knowledge that is considered important for nation building. It also looks at research on approaches and structures to initial teacher learning as an indication of the intellectual and moral direction to which schooling must aspire. Contributors look at these dynamics across a range of societies including Australia, the Czech Republic, England, Finland, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, and the USA. Using a review of the literature approach within a comparative framework, the book seeks to answer the following questions for each country: What has been the evolution of different approaches to learning to teach in each setting, and what factors have influenced change over the years? What are the underlying theories that characterize past and current thinking about the knowledge, skills and dispositions needed by teachers and what evidence is used to support these theories? What does a review on the state of the knowledge about teacher education over the past 30 years reveal about the evolution of the research and knowledge traditions that have supported current and past innovations in teacher education? Maria Teresa Tatto and Ian Menter explore international variability in different conceptions of knowledge in the context of learning to teach and explore the way in which national and international influences interact in the developing trajectories of teacher education policy and practice, considering what knowledge is considered important for teachers to have."--

This edited collection brings together papers written by a number of experienced international academics who share a passion for promoting research-informed, high-quality pre-service and in-service teacher education that makes a positive difference to the lives of teachers and their students. Taken together, the contributions to this book represent a call to arms for all who lead education policy at local, regional, and national levels, teacher educators, and schools themselves, to engage in sustained and productive collaboration. Topics include: the centrality of empathy to the classroom, ‘practical theorising’ that is a central part of all good teachers’ armoury; the possibilities for collaborative professionalism which enables them to extend and enrich their thinking, commitment, and capacity for resilience; the pedagogical reasoning, habits of mind, critical reflection, knowledge, and skills that lead to the best classroom practices. Only when the voices of stakeholders at all these levels are brought together, heard, and enacted, are students in all schools in all contexts and in all jurisdictions likely to receive the quality of education to which all are entitled. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Teachers and Teaching.

Rethinking the Education Doctorate so that practitioner knowledge is at the center of programmatic concern in teacher education raises provocative education policy/practice considerations. Participants in the national Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) are doing just this. Their accounts of rethinking what counts as educational knowledge and their reconsideration of the roles of teacher educators, scholar-practitioners, students, policy makers, and others are illuminated in this book. Asserting the primacy of practitioner knowledge, the book generates a rich and complex terrain of issues and considerations that participating CPED institutions navigate as multiple technical, normative, and political questions at the crux of educator preparation, professional growth, and control of their field. And, it is this terrain that calls attention to the nature of practitioner knowledge and its inherent potential for redirecting, mediating, and generating education policy. Conversations within and across national and local levels orient away from technical means-ends “what works” questions alone, and open into normative and political questions about educational value and professional action. In documenting the largest, most coordinated effort to rethink the educational doctorate in a century of such efforts, this book will interest teacher educators and programs engaged in pre-service and graduate level teacher education, practicing K-16 teachers, and education policy/practice interest groups and individuals. Illustrating a policy development method that is neither top-down nor necessarily ‘grass roots’, it also invites the interest of other educational sectors. Additionally, as CPED implementation contexts value interdisciplinarity, multiple methodological perspectives, and interactions and deliberations across interests, the lived consequences and significances of doing so are mapped out and, as such, hold much potential for policy/practice intersections within manifold education settings, and beyond, to settings of all kinds invested in the primacy of practitioner knowledge. Thus, a core goal of this volume is to broach these considerations with a broad readership.

This book brings together and compares the teacher education policies and practices of eight high-achieving countries to consider what creates high-quality teachers in today's world.

"No education topic is more important than how to raise the qualityof teaching in America's schools. This book eloquently makes thecase for reshaping teacher preparation and professional developmentto enhance student learning." --Bob Chase, president, National Education Association Leading educational thinkers and researchers deliver an in-depthoverview of the issues and challenges facing the teachingprofession today. This book is the first in over a decade tosynthesize the most important research in the fields of teachingand teacher education. This research is also the basis forrecommAndations found in What Matters Most, a landmarkreport from the National Commission on Teaching and America'sFuture. The authors explore promising approaches to both policy andpractice in teacher learning. They also provide the substancebehind policy recommAndations, examining the implications of schoolreforms for teaching, current knowledge about teacher preparation,and the kinds of learning opportunities teachers will need. Teaching as the Learning Profession includes case studiesof innovative approaches to school improvement, principles forbetter staff development, proposals for the reform of unions, andpractical as well as conceptual advice on recruitment, licensing,redefining the teaching career, enhancing diversity, developingleadership, and expanding such innovations as networks and othersustained forms of teacher-to-teacher learning.

This powerful text organizes Marilyn Cochran-Smith's influential essays from the Journal of Teacher Education into one concise guide to teacher preparation at its best.