Over the last decade, there have been multiple recommendations for evaluating, assessing, or holding teacher preparation accountable. This article analyzes recent policy proposals regarding "best practices for evaluating teacher preparation programs" by critiquing 19 major reports explicitly focused on evaluation. The analysis revealed…

Since the early 2000s, accountability and evaluation have been regarded by policymakers as key mechanisms for "fixing" teacher education and by many teacher education leaders as vehicles for elevating the status of the profession and uniting a fragmented field. Although educational inequity has been an enduring and endemic problem during…

In many developed countries over the past two decades, there have been new standards, new monitoring systems, new course and fieldwork requirements for teacher candidates, new accreditation criteria, and/or new auditing procedures for colleges and universities that offer initial teacher preparation programmes. However there has also been enormous…

Background: Equity is invoked as a watchword in teacher education--a catch-all connected to an array of issues related to diversity, justice, or gaps in outcomes and opportunities for minoritized groups. This conceptual article argues that equity is often undefined and undertheorized in teacher education, and the complexities involved in…

A controversial innovation within the rapidly expanding field of teacher education is the relocation of teacher preparation to new graduate schools of education (nGSEs), which are not university based but are state authorized and approved as institutions of higher education to prepare teachers, endorse them for initial teacher certification, and…

Consistent with the anniversary theme of this special issue of ATE, this article offers an overview of 40 years of advocacy for social justice- and equity-centered teacher preparation through three extended examples from the author's own work. Arranged chronologically and shaped by differing policy and political landscapes, the examples represent…

In 2010, as the result of a congressionally mandated study, the National Research Council (NRC) published the report "Preparing Teachers: Building Evidence for Sound Policy" (NRC, 2010). Reflecting the unprecedented attention to teacher quality that had emerged internationally in response to the exigencies of the "global knowledge…

Teacher accountability has been a major strategy for "fixing" education for the last 2 decades. In this book, Cochran-Smith and her research team argue that it is time for teacher educators to reclaim accountability by adopting a new approach that features intelligent professional responsibility, challenges the structures and processes…

In keeping with the theme of the 40th anniversary issue of "EJTE," this article looks back and forward at US teacher education accountability. It argues that "holding teacher education accountable" has been the major approach to reforming teacher education in the US for the last two decades, assuming that enhanced teacher…

Teacher preparation has emerged as an acutely politicized and publicized issue in U.S. education policy and practice, and there have been fierce debates about whether, how, by whom, and for what purposes teachers should be prepared. This brief takes up four major national initiatives intended to improve teacher quality by "holding teacher…

This is the first of a two-part article that aims to chart the contemporary landscape of research on teacher preparation and certification. It is based on a review of more than 1,500 studies published between 2000 and 2012. Part 1 provides information about how the review was conducted and describes the theoretical/analytic framework the authors…

The pressure for accountability in higher education is extremely high. Some advocate accountability systems that use standardised measures of student learning and non-cognitive outcomes; others argue that locally developed measures provide a better fit with the unique mission of institutions. We first describe a general "proof of…

Currently there are multiple teacher education reform policies being proposed, piloted, and debated at a variety of levels and by various interest groups, stakeholders, and policy-makers. Along with an unprecedented sense of urgency about these important goals, what most U.S. reforms have in common is increased accountability. Using a discourse…

Currently the press to make policy and practice decisions on the basis of evidence is being coupled with recognition that real change requires shifts in organizational culture. Consequently, there are now many efforts to "re-culture" organizations by making evidence central to decision making. In this article, the authors problematize the notion…

There are many controversies related to the increasingly widespread theme of "social justice" in teacher education, including debates about whether and/or how promoting pupils' learning is part of this theme. This article briefly discusses the concept of teacher education for social justice in terms of pupils' learning and then considers…