In this commentary, Tucker asserts that countries that perform well on international comparisons of student achievement all take a different approach to ensuring teacher quality than the United States does. These top-performing countries have established high standards for getting into schools of education; they are moving teacher education…

One of the main challenges confronted by higher education in the 21st century is to internationalize its programs and to make students more globally competent. This challenge is not new, but it has become increasingly complex. Gutek (1993) explains how the efforts to internationalize the university in the United States became particularly…

Based on his reading, research, and experiences as both a classroom teacher and teacher educator, the author accepts Dewey's ultimate recognition that the problem is not simply that teachers are unaware of alternatives to schooling as usual, and that better teacher education is the solution to making schools the sites of more active learning. The…

What constitutes a high quality teacher education program and what standards teacher candidates should meet before receiving their teaching credential? This volume advances deep understanding of the nature and sources of policy affecting the preparation of teachers in the U.S. and the conflicts or interconnections of these policies with the…

As a result of the Reading First Program of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the view of reading has narrowed. Individual state's Reading First professional development programs, and hence reading teachers across the United States, have spent the six years since the funding of the program in 2002 focusing beginning and developmental reading on…

To answer the editor's question "What are the major challenges faced by teacher education in an increasing global society?" many issues deserve notice. They may be summarized as building the will, the space, the capacity, and the evidence. The author starts with an assumption that, at least rhetorically, is not controversial. Teacher…

The major challenge faced by teacher education in an increasingly global society is to prepare teachers who can function effectively in a standards and accountability environment while modeling and inspiring their students to be internationally minded, creative citizens. However, the demographic changes taking place throughout the world,…

Elementary school children in the United States are not developing acceptable levels of mathematical proficiency (National Center for Education Statistics, 1999), and a major concern of teacher educators is that teachers lack the depth and flexibility of mathematical understanding and the corresponding beliefs they need to teach for proficiency…

This article builds on a case study about how teacher education students may actually learn racism through their program. It employs an analysis of how new racism is operationalized in today's sociopolitical contexts. Field placements and knowledge taught about various groups are critiqued as major teacher education reform efforts that…

Differences between British and U.S. economic education with respect to both the rigor of the precollege curriculum and the training of teachers are discussed. The principal difference is that the typical American secondary economics teacher is a social studies teacher, whereas his or her British counterpart is a trained economist. (RM)

Despite the many criticisms that have been made of vocational education teacher preparation, the field has many strengths that can serve as a base on which to build excellent programs. Six examples of excellence are pointed out: (1) important vocational teacher competencies have been identified and verified; (2) high quality performance-based…

This monograph describes elementary teacher education in South Korea and aspects of Korean society that have contributed to the uniqueness of this educative process. Within the context of comparative education, the essay introduces the cultural, social, and institutional attributes of Korea; discusses specifics of the educative process as a…

This paper offers an overview and analysis of the status of teaching as an occupation and of teacher development in the United States. An opening section describes the development of the industrial-based education model that has been in place for this century and the reform movements that have started in the past two decades. A section on the…