Teacher prep 3.0: a vision for teacher education to impact social transformation

Abstract

Teacher education in the USA is composed of both defenders and critics of the current system of teacher preparation. Some critics of college and university-based teacher education who describe themselves as ‘reformers’ have referred to the non-university programmes as ‘teacher preparation 2.0’ in order to emphasise the innovativeness they feel these programmes represent. They imply that the programmes existing prior to these new, non-university are teacher education 1.0 programmes, which they see as obsolete. We argue in this paper that many 1.0 and 2.0 programmes are inadequate for meeting the nation’s needs to provide high quality, effective teachers for all children in USA public schools, and we present a case for teacher preparation 3.0 programmes. Given the weaknesses in both teacher education 1.0 and 2.0, there exists a need to transform rather than defend or ‘reform’ the current system.

Keywords:

• Teacher education
• educational policy
• alternative certification
• social justice
• community