Research on Teacher Education. Occasional Paper No. 80.

Overview & Synopsis

Studies are reviewed of issues that potentially inform policies and practices in initial and continuing education, including teacher educators, prospective and practicing teachers as learners, the teacher education curriculum, and the milieu in which teacher education takes place. Across these four areas, mutually reinforcing factors explain why teacher education has been kept from being as academic and intellectual as it should be, and why change has been slow and difficult. The research review indicates that, although a number of academically talented persons pursue careers in teaching and teacher education, persons with limited academic talent are allowed to dominate the field. Studies of the curriculum of initial and continuing teacher education show it to be fragmented, shallow, and overly technical. Institutional policies, structures, and resources that might be expected to foster the quality of teaching and teacher education appear to do the opposite. A pattern is revealed which reinforces the maintenance of teacher education as a marginal part of the university and school communities. Significant change in teacher education will be difficult, since reform will have to be orchestrated through attention to a set of complex, interdependent factors. (Author/JD)