Introduces three fanciful recommendations for improving teacher education. They include closing the largest teacher education programs, eliminating courses (which create fragmentation), and refusing to detach pedagogy from content. The paper discusses ways that it might be possible to accomplish such goals. (SM)

This book focuses on redesigning teacher education. Chapter 1, "Composing a Life as a Teacher Educator," examines a teacher educator's early career and how he arrived at certain perspectives that underlie his thinking on what needs to change in the curriculum, organization, and administration of teacher education. Chapter 2, "Common Criticisms and…

This paper examines the Holmes Group proposal to eliminate the undergraduate teacher education major, sees more concern with the structure than with the substance of reform, and finds a commitment to a linear form of professional study. This, it is argued, is in the political interest of research universities. (Author/MT)

This monograph provides a framework for analyzing and evaluating the soundness of teacher education reform proposals. Key questions covering five areas that may be addressed to various proposals are presented: (1) problem definition; (2) solutions proposed; (3) rationale for the problem definition and proposed solutions; (4) feasibility of…

This article proposes rules of thumb about the teacher education design process. The rules are grounded in the attempts at reforming teacher education at Washington University in the early 1970s, at a time during which a year-long, field-based alternative to the traditional elementary program was operated. (IAH)

This paper presents four major teacher education reform thrusts in the United States, touching on several important characteristics of the U.S. context for teacher education: the locus of control for education; both private and public control over teacher education; the loss of faith in education; disagreement over whether teacher education needs…