Rather than delineating a list of practices that are important for ensuring that mathematics prepares students for a more democratic citizenship, the author has outlined in this article three tensions in teaching that she argues are important in developing an equity stance in mathematics education. This focus on a "stance" suggests that the kinds…

Opportunities for professional development can benefit the practice of teaching, the learning of students, and the culture of schooling. Thus, considerable attention has been given to effective professional development programs and many reform agendas have made such initiatives a priority (No Child Left Behind, 2002; National Board for…

The authors propose a framework for teacher preparation programs that aims to help prospective teachers learn how to teach from studying teaching. The framework is motivated by their interest in defining a set of competencies that provide a deliberate, systematic path to becoming an effective teacher over time. The framework is composed of four…

These are strange times for teacher education in a democratic society because globalization dominates economic, political, and technological interfaces among social institutions, nation-states, and the world. These are also dangerous times for teacher education in a democratic society because the expansion of neoliberalism as form of contemporary…

Intentional, systemic philosophical change on an educational program level and on an individual level is often a slow and cyclic process. In this article, we reflect on the journey of philosophical change and growth from a traditional philosophy to an inquiry-based, Reggio-inspired one that occurred on both levels in an early childhood teacher…

Lois Weiner (2007) asserts that neoliberalism is "a lethal threat to U.S. teacher education" (p. 274). In this paper, the authors argue that neoliberalism poses the most important challenge faced by teacher education in an increasingly global society. Neoliberalism is having a direct impact on U.S. teacher education in the form of the…

In April 2007, at the annual Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) Convention in Louisville, the author had the pleasure of meeting and then dining with Dr. Karen Dilka, executive director of the Council on Education of the Deaf (CED). Dilka also contributed as the on-site liaison and local arrangements chairperson for the Division for…

One goal of basic research in education is to identify the variables of effective instruction. As this pursuit has been conceived, however, its theoretical problems make it unlikely that the effort will provide a clear picture of instructional variables, their interactions, or the kind of teacher training that is implied by instructional variables.

In this paper, I offer my own counterstory of matriculating through a teacher education program as an African American student on a predominately White campus as a reference point for thinking through how racism operates through teacher education's dominant discourse and practice of teacher reflection. It is an important story to tell primarily…

Use of appropriate measurement methods and the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) Principles to assess teacher dispositions provides a safety net against legal and political challenges while also providing useful information for outcomes assessment. NCATE (2002) requires the measurement of dispositions as part of its…

Teacher education programs focussing on the development of specialist teachers for "the middle years" have proliferated in Australian universities in recent years. This paper provides some insights into middle years' teacher education programs at the University of Queensland, Edith Cowan and Flinders Universities with regard to their:…

It has been generally accepted that teaching does not meet the criteria of a profession, at least as exemplified by the more mature professions of medicine and law (Abbott, 1988; Darling-Hammond & Youngs, 2002; Etzioni, 1969; Howsam, Corrigan, Denemark, & Nash, 1976). Teaching is most often referred to as a semiprofession; Myers's (2008 [this…

Many have suggested that issues of democracy are fundamentally related to school curricula and contexts (Conant, 1948; Dewey, 1944; Dimitriadis and Carlson, 2003; West, 2004). Current social theorists have suggested that a globalized social, economic, and cultural structure has necessitated a rethinking of the relationships between individuals,…

These are demanding times for America and for nations around the world. Today, as at no time in recent history, everyone is experiencing massive, often-tumultuous changes that are transforming one's society economically, politically, and socially. As ongoing debates about these and other factors continue to redefine the world, America's education…

Every year, it seems, there are cries that foundations of education is in peril. A panel at the recent meetings of American Educational Studies Association (AESA) focused on the fate of foundations in teacher education programs. At this panel, foundations scholars engaged in lively conversation about how to protect and promote foundations of…