This article encourages teacher educators to focus their work on healing and well-being in response to the array of precarities in the world. Framing this work is a driving question inspired by the current political moment and articles in this issue of "Teacher Education Quarterly": How can teacher educators promote well-being and…

In the coming decades, the United States' population is expected to become more diverse. Despite this, teachers of color remain significantly underrepresented in K-12 classrooms, and those serving historically marginalized communities are increasingly leaving their teaching positions. This highlights an ongoing challenge in teacher education, both…

A primary purpose of teacher education is to prepare and induct candidates into the teaching profession. What does it mean to be a professional educator? Is deep content knowledge really enough as the federal government and others suggest? Does professionalism look different in urban contexts? How do teachers learn to navigate the multiple…

Planning is a central task of teaching and a central focus in learning to teach. But what does planning entail, and how is planning best learned? What challenges do experienced teachers serving as school-based teacher educators face in becoming teachers of planning? What role can university teacher educators play in helping mentor teachers learn…

Journal writing is a kind of reflective writing that requires prospective teachers to construct knowledge through questioning their own assumptions about teaching and learning, and hence in line with the general direction of education reform in Hong Kong. This article describes a study that uses response journals as a tool for fostering reflection…

Factors that influence the process of a teacher's development are only partially understood. Some researchers have shown that students enter preservice education programs believing that good teaching is highly related to their knowledge and their ability to convey that knowledge to others. It is also expected that students entering teacher…

By taking the position that teaching for social justice is an act of necessity and solidarity, this work seeks to highlight two examples of teacher education initiatives. Because the relationships between teacher, student, family, school, and state are integral to the teaching process, three central questions guide the authors' thinking and…

Over the last decade, teacher performance assessments (TPAs) have begun to find appeal in the context of teacher education programs and teacher licensing for their innovative ways of assessing teacher knowledge and skills but primarily for their potential to promote teacher learning and reflective teaching. Studies of preservice teachers who have…

This study examined changes in prospective elementary teachers' conceptions related to their descriptions of the qualities of effective teachers. In order to gain an understanding of teacher candidates' conceptions of quality teachers, the authors attempted to garner information from both qualitative and quantitative data derived through multiple…

This article presents findings from the second year of one large university's grant-supported work to infuse teacher education courses with new contents, guided discourse, and diverse field experiences related to urban teacher preparation (UTP). The findings are based on data from attitudinal surveys completed at the beginning and end of each…

Many institutions that prepare teachers profess a commitment to issues of diversity and educational equity in their mission and vision statements. However, despite the fact that the enrollment of students of color in institutions of higher education has increased by 48% over the last ten years, the racial/ethnic composition of teacher preparation…

This article presents a qualitative case study that explored preservice teachers' perceptions about their own learning within the culture of a branch-campus, cohort-model teacher preparation program and through their first year of teaching. This study investigated how a cohort of twelve preservice teachers--many of whom were nontraditional-aged…

Teacher education programs provide many environments and experiences in an effort to support elementary preservice teacher development. Ultimately the goal is to transform the student into the teacher. Students enter teacher education programs focused on their present education, grades, and getting that long-sought-after degree; by selecting a…

Educating preservice teachers for culturally responsive teaching in increasingly diverse contexts remains a substantive challenge. Research findings have suggested that courses in multicultural education have not had much impact on instructional practices of preservice teachers as they enter schools and classrooms. Other scholars have argued that…

Many educators have suggested that teachers hold the authority, and thus the responsibility, for initiating the curricular and instructional changes made within their own classrooms. One implication of this suggestion is that teachers be reflective about their practice. Yet, reflection is a difficult process that requires critical thought,…