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…

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…

Teachers working together in learning communities is a popular aspect of school reform projects in countries around the world. However, teacher communities vary greatly from one another. This article describes two communities whose purpose is to help teachers work for equity by focusing on questions that emerge from practice and from genuine…

This article argues that research on teacher preparation over the last 100 years can be understood in terms of the major questions that researchers examined. The analysis is guided by the framework of "research as historically situated social practice," which emphasizes that researchers' interests, commitments, and social experiences…

This article explores the enduring fissure between general and special teacher education by focusing directly on the issues that divide these two fields. In the first part of the article, the authors describe their individual and shared positionalities as scholars and practitioners. Then the article examines differences in the disciplinary…

In this article the authors respond to Leah Wasburn-Moses's thoughtful response to their article, "Diversity in Teacher Education and Special Education: The Issues That Divide." In their article, the authors identified what they believe are fundamental differences in how dominant voices in the special education and general teacher education…

In this long-awaited sequel to "Inside/Outside: Teacher Research and Knowledge", two leaders in the field of practitioner research offer a radically different view of the relationship of knowledge and practice and of the role of practitioners in educational change. In their new book, the authors put forward the notion of inquiry as stance as a…

A particularly controversial aspect of teacher preparation is the increasing number of teacher preparation programs that emphasize "social justice" as part of the curriculum. This article examines how students in a program with a social justice agenda understood the concept and how their understandings played out in practice. Using interviews and…

This study used the Teaching for Social Justice Observation Scale (TSJOS) of the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol-Plus (RTOP+) to examine the extent to which twenty-two novice elementary teachers implemented practices related to teaching for social justice in their mathematics instruction. In addition, this study sought to examine the extent…

This article speaks to two current trends in teacher education--the press to assess teacher education in terms of measurable outcomes, on one hand, and the growing emphasis on social justice as a theme of teacher education, on the other. The article begins with a discussion of the concept of teacher education for social justice. Then, using Rasch…

This article constructs learning to teach for social justice as a complex but assessable outcome of teacher preparation. It provides a conceptual framework and describes a set of assessment tools and studies that use quantitative and qualitative methods for the collection and analysis of data. We conceptualize learning to teach for social justice…

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…

In contrast to current education policies that conceptualize pupil learning largely in terms of standardized exam scores, we offer an alternative view, one that conceives of pupil learning as a source of insight for pupils and teachers alike. Drawing on survey data and a qualitative study of the teacher candidate experience, we explore the…

In this article, Cochran-Smith argues that now more than ever, teacher education needs public intellectuals to challenge prevailing views and expose its governing myths. The author makes this argument by describing two issues that are in great need of public critique: (1) the myth that teacher education is a public policy problem that can be…

Despite the fact that most teacher education programs report that they have thoroughly incorporated diversity perspectives and multicultural content into the curriculum, external examinations often prove to the contrary. Likewise, synthesizers of the research on teacher education have consistently concluded that despite more than two decades of…