Redesigning Teacher Education. SUNY Series in Teacher Preparation and Development.

Overview & Synopsis

This book focuses on redesigning teacher education. Chapter 1, "Composing a Life as a Teacher Educator," examines a teacher educator's early career and how he arrived at certain perspectives that underlie his thinking on what needs to change in the curriculum, organization, and administration of teacher education. Chapter 2, "Common Criticisms and Popular Reform Proposals," analyzes frequent criticisms of teacher education (e.g., that education courses are vapid, impractical, segmented, and directionless) and assesses popular proposals in terms of those critiques. Chapter 3, "Teacher Education by Design," considers the weaknesses of the view that teacher education can be fashioned by implication, noting why the design approach is a better way to conceptualize teacher education reform and discussing the basic elements of design. Chapter 4, "Principles of Conceptual Design," identifies 11 conceptual design principles. Chapter 5, "Principles of Structural Design," elaborates structural design principles. Chapter 6, "Strategies for Change in Teacher Education," examines why propositions about the change process are too abstract to be useful guides for recasting teacher education, proposing four specific change strategies as being more appropriate than propositions. Chapter 7, "Barriers to Change in Teacher Education," discuses factors that impede educational change (e.g., excessive external regulation, low status of teacher educators, and failure to give sufficient attention to the administrative arrangements for teacher education). (SM)