Educating Teacher Educators: International Perspectives

ABSTRACT

The people who prepare teachers – teacher educators – are often explicitly or implicitly held accountable for teacher quality and are frequently blamed when school students do not meet national or international expectations. Despite high expectations, historically there has been little attention to the education of teacher educators or to local and larger policies that would support the development of teacher educators who are prepared to meet the complex demands of teaching teachers for the twenty-first century. This includes addressing the persistent discrepancies and “gaps” between historically privileged and disadvantaged groups in terms of educational opportunities and outcomes. In this article, Cochran-Smith and colleagues analyze how teacher educators are educated in four different countries – the U.S., New Zealand, Israel, and Norway – which vary considerably in terms of their historical, geopolitical, and policy contexts. The article suggests that international perspectives on the policies and practices related to the education of teachers and teacher educators are important politically, sociologically and educationally. They reveal commonalities and differences in how those in power desire to shape the education of those who will shape the lives of society’s future participants and reveal a great deal about nations’ priorities, assumptions, and values related to equity and inequity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Lexie Grudnoff has been a teacher educator practitioner and researcher at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Over her 40 years as a teacher educator she has had extensive involvement in program leadership, evaluation, and national policy reviews and initiatives.

² Māori achieving success as Māori means teachers and teacher educators valuing Māori identity, language and culture and supporting Māori students in gaining the skills, knowledge and qualifications they need to achieve success in te ao Māori (the Māori world), in New Zealand, and in the wider world.

³ Lily Orland-Barak is actively involved in the study and practice of teacher education at the University of Haifa, Israel. Her research focuses on teacher mentoring, mentored learning in practice and professional development in pre-service and in-service education. She has been centrally involved in the development and dissemination of teacher education curricula with a focus on workplace learning in the context of school-university partnerships in Israel.

⁴ The MOFET Institute, founded by the Ministry of Education in 1983, is a national intercollegiate center for the research and development of curricula and programs in teacher education and teaching in the colleges. It constitutes a unique framework both in Israel and worldwide for supporting teacher educators’ professional development.

⁵ Kari Smith is an experienced teacher and teacher educator in Israel and in Norway. She was involved with establishing the Norwegian Research School in Teacher Education (NAFOL), of which she is currently the Director. She is member of the Scientific Advisory Board to the European Doctorate in Teacher Education (EDITE). Smith is the Head of the International Forum for Teacher Educator Professional Development (InFO-TED).

⁶ Marilyn Cochran-Smith has been a teacher education scholar and practitioner for 40 years at the University of Pennsylvania and its partners in Philadelphia area schools and then at Boston College and partners in Boston area schools. She has been centrally involved in conceptualizing, enacting, and studying inquiry- and equity-centered preparation programs and in conducting national and international policy analyses.