Karen Hammerness

Bio: Karen Hammerness is an academic researcher from Bard College. The author has contributed to research in topics: Teacher education & Coursework. The author has an hindex of 22, co-authored 32 publications receiving 2961 citations. Previous affiliations of Karen Hammerness include Stanford University.

Redefining teaching, re‐imagining teacher education

Abstract: In this article, the authors provide an argument for future directions for teacher education, based on a re‐conceptualization of teaching. The authors argue that teacher educators need to attend to the clinical aspects of practice and experiment with how best to help novices develop skilled practice. Taking clinical practice seriously will require teacher educators to add pedagogies of enactment to an existing repertoire of pedagogies of reflection and investigation. In order to make this shift, the authors contend that teacher educators will need to undo a number of historical divisions that underlie the education of teachers. These include the curricular divide between foundations and methods courses, as well as the separation between the university and schools. Finally, the authors propose that teacher education be organized around a core set of practices in which knowledge, skill, and professional identity are developed in the process of learning to practice during professional education.

Measure for Measure: The Relationship between Measures of Instructional Practice in Middle School English Language Arts and Teachers' Value-Added Scores. NBER Working Paper No. 16015.

Abstract: Over the past 2 years, educational policy makers have focused much of their attention on issues related to teacher effectiveness. The Obama administration has made teacher evaluation and teacher quality a central feature of many of its educational policies, including Race to the Top (RTTT), Investing in Innovation (i3), and the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grants. In response, many states and school districts are developing measures of teacher effectiveness to reward, tenure, support, and fire teachers. In response to these policies, many observers are raising questions and concerns about the measures of teacher effectiveness that inform high-stakes personnel decisions. Unfortunately, we have little systematic knowledge regarding the properties of most of these measures. This article has two goals: to explore elements of instruction that may be associated with improved student achievement and to examine the domains of teaching skills that are identified in the literature as important to high-quality teaching but that may not be highly correlated with value-added measures of teacher effectiveness.

From Coherence in Theory to Coherence in Practice

Abstract: Historically, one of the central concerns that has plagued the field of teacher education is the observation that fragmentation characterizes the experience of learning to teach. Too often, university-based teacher education programs consist of a set of disconnected individual courses; separate clinical work from coursework; and lack a vision of teaching and learning. Therefore, some teacher educators have argued that creating structurally and conceptually coherent programs will result in more powerful learning for prospective teachers. Yet, although empirical work on such programs is growing, there is little research on the nature of coherence and on how it might develop. To that end, this article documents one teacher education program’s efforts to become more coherent, focusing on the ways in which the program tries to become more coherent and on the challenges of coherence. The article concludes with implications for teacher education program design and evaluation, with a focus on the power, complexity, and problems of coherence.

Constructing Coherence: Structural Predictors of Perceptions of Coherence in NYC Teacher Education Programs

Abstract: In this article, the authors focus on the concept of coherence, a relatively underexplored concept in teacher education. They investigate the relationship between students' perceptions of coherence and a number of structural features of teacher education programs to help develop a stronger definition of one important dimension of coherence—the relationship between fieldwork and coursework. The authors examine the relationship between specific program features and students' perceptions of the degree to which program vision, principles, and practices are aligned with those in the field and also explore the degree to which students have opportunities to practice what they are learning in the program and to enact program goals and visions of good teaching and learning in the classroom. In a field that is calling for larger-scale studies, this research attempts to identify promising features that are also amenable to large-scale studies of the impact of teacher education.

Unpacking the "Urban" in Urban Teacher Education: Making a Case for Context-Specific Preparation.

Abstract: The literature on preparing teachers for urban schools provides a rationale for helping candidates understand the particular cultures of students. However, research has not sufficiently “unpacked” ...

经验与教育 = Experience and education

Abstract: Experience and Educationis the best concise statement on education ever published by John Dewey, the man acknowledged to be the pre-eminent educational theorist of the twentieth century. Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education(Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of his intervening experience with the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories had received. Analysing both "traditional" and "progressive" education, Dr. Dewey here insists that neither the old nor the new education is adequate and that each is miseducative because neither of them applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience. Many pages of this volume illustrate Dr. Dewey's ideas for a philosophy of experience and its relation to education. He particularly urges that all teachers and educators looking for a new movement in education should think in terms of the deeped and larger issues of education rather than in terms of some divisive "ism" about education, even such an "ism" as "progressivism." His philosophy, here expressed in its most essential, most readable form, predicates an American educational system that respects all sources of experience, on that offers a true learning situation that is both historical and social, both orderly and dynamic.

CONSTRUCTING 21st-CENTURY TEACHER EDUCATION

Abstract: Much of what teachers need to know to be successful is invisible to lay observers, leading to the view that teaching requires little formal study and to frequent disdain for teacher education programs. The weakness of traditional program models that are collections of largely unrelated courses reinforce this low regard. This article argues that we have learned a great deal about how to create stronger, more effective teacher education programs. Three critical components of such programs include tight coherence and integration among courses and between course work and clinical work in schools, extensive and intensely supervised clinical work integrated with course work using pedagogies linking theory and practice, and closer, proactive relationships with schools that serve diverse learners effectively and develop and model good teaching. Also, schools of education should resist pressures to water down preparation, which ultimately undermine the preparation of entering teachers, the reputation of schools of education, and the strength of the profession.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Abstract: What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

Understanding teacher identity: an overview of issues in the literature and implications for teacher education

Abstract: While literature on teaching emphasizes the importance of identity in teacher development, understanding identity and the issues related to it can be a challenging endeavour. This article provides an overview of the issues revealed in recent discussions of teacher identity: the problem of defining the concept; the place of the self, and related issues of agency, emotion, narrative and discourse; the role of reflection; and the influence of contextual factors. A particular focus is placed on identity in pre‐service teachers and new practitioners. Implications of an understanding of these issues for programmes of teacher education are highlighted.