Journal of Teacher Education RSS feed -- OnlineFirst Articles

Lifting Off the Ground to Return Anew: Mediated Praxis, Transformative Learning, and Social Design Experiments

Gutierrez, K. D., Vossoughi, S. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:05:25 PST

This article examines a praxis model of teacher education and advances a new method for engaging novice teachers in reflective practice and robust teacher learning. Social design experiments—cultural historical formations designed to promote transformative learning for adults and children—are organized around expansive notions of learning and mediated praxis and provide new tools and practices for envisioning new pedagogical arrangements, especially for students from nondominant communities. The authors examine one long-standing social design experiment, the UCLA UC Links/Las Redes partnership and the work of one exemplary novice teacher to illustrate the importance of mediated, reflective practices in helping apprentice teachers develop a coherent and orienting framework for teaching and learning that has both heuristic and explanatory power. The authors illustrate how cultural historical concepts of learning and development and situated practice become the means for university students to gain distance and reflect on the beliefs and practices that have informed their understandings of teaching and to "rise to the concrete" practices of learning jointly and resonantly.

Against Boldness

Kennedy, M. — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:06:50 PDT

Acting on Beliefs in Teacher Education for Cultural Diversity

Gay, G. — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:06:50 PDT

This discussion focuses on an aspect of teacher education for diversity that is frequently mentioned but not developed in sufficient detail. It is preservice teachers’ and teacher educators’ attitudes and beliefs about racial, cultural, and ethnic differences. These are the ideological anchors of teaching decisions and behaviors and meet Cuban’s criteria of deep structures and second-order targets of educational reform.

Parables, Storytelling, and Teacher Education

Bullough, R. — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:06:51 PDT

Arguing that teacher education has become rule bound, even in the use of teaching narratives and cases, and for the need to challenge beginning teachers' conceptions of teaching and learning, the author suggests parables as promising means for enlivening teacher education and for stretching understanding. After defining parable, the author presents an analysis of three examples—The Storm, The Sower, and The Fish and the Turtle—to illustrate some of the rich interpretative possibilities they offer for thinking critically and imaginatively about teaching and learning and for generating fresh educational metaphors useful for guiding thought and action.

Beyond Knowledge: Exploring Why Some Teachers Are More Thoughtfully Adaptive Than Others

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:46:26 PDT

As teacher educators, we have observed that knowledge alone does not lead to the kinds of thoughtful teaching we strive for. Puzzled by differences in the teaching practices of teacher candidates having similar professional knowledge, we explore what might account for these differences. We address what is necessary, beyond traditional forms of professional knowledge, to support the development of thoughtful teachers who are responsive to students and situations. We provide four perspectives, each drawn from areas in which we conduct our research, and suggest a need to move beyond knowledge in teacher education. Our aim is to explore questions about preparing thoughtful teachers and to challenge others to do the same. We postulate that self-knowledge and a sense of agency with the intent of purposefully negotiating personal and professional contexts may be as important, if not more important, than the more traditional conceptions of professional knowledge.

What Does Teacher Education Have to Do With Teaching? Implications for Diversity Studies

Milner, R. — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:46:27 PDT

Several concepts that are important for inclusion in any teacher education curriculum regarding diversity studies are elucidated in this article. The framing question of the discussion is: What are some relevant conceptions regarding issues of diversity that every teacher education program should consider including in its curriculum? The author outlines important concepts that contribute to what he calls teachers’ conceptual repertoires of diversity. The concepts are: color-blindness, cultural conflict, meritocracy, deficit conceptions, and expectations. The idea is that when teachers enter teacher education, their conceptions—their mindset, thinking, belief systems, attitudes, and overall understanding of the teaching and learning exchange—need to be addressed because these conceptions shape their curricula and instructional practices with P-12 students. The author is not suggesting that the five conceptual repertoires of diversity presented in this article are exhaustive; based on research, the list represents some areas that seem important for teachers’ building repertoires to teach culturally diverse students successfully. The author concludes with a call to action for teacher educators and teacher education.

Learning Teaching in, From, and for Practice: What Do We Mean?

Lampert, M. — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:46:27 PDT

In talk about teacher preparation and professional development, we often hear the word practice associated with what, how, or when the learning of teaching is supposed to happen. In this article, four different conceptions of practice are investigated, and their implications for how learning teaching might be organized are explored. Rather than a comprehensive review of the literature, what is presented here is a set of ideas that draw on both past and present efforts at reform. The purpose of this essay is to provoke clarification of what we mean when we talk about practice in relation to learning teaching. The author draws on her own research on the work of teaching from the perspective of practice to represent the nature of the work and to speculate from various perspectives on how that work might be learned.

Making Practice Public: Teacher Learning in the 21st Century

Lieberman, A., Pointer-Mace, D. — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:46:27 PDT

We propose that the advent and ubiquity of new media tools and social networking resources provide a means for professional, networked learning to "scale up." We preface our discussion with a review of research that has led us to argue for professional learning communities, document the policies and practices of professional development in high-achieving countries internationally that have transformed the way teachers learn, and discuss online social networking as it is being used for teacher learning. Our 10-year experience at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching gave us an opportunity to learn to make multimedia representations of practice for use in both preservice and professional development. We believe that making practice public in this way can be transformative.