Relationships of Knowledge and Practice: Teacher Learning in Communities

This article examines a variety of work currently going on across the country in newly created hybrid spaces to more closely connect campus courses and field experiences in university-based preservice teacher education. It is argued that the old paradigm of university-based teacher education where academic knowledge is viewed as the authoritative source of knowledge about teaching needs to change to one where there is a nonhierarchical interplay between academic, practitioner, and community expertise. It is argued that this new epistemology for teacher education will create expanded learning opportunities for prospective teachers that will better prepare them to be successful in enacting complex teaching practices.

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Rethinking the Connections between Campus Courses and Field Experiences in College- and University-Based Teacher Education

93 empirical studies on learning to teach were reviewed in order to establish what is currently known about how people learn to teach and to critique the quality of the reporting of that research. Among other observations concerning teacher education, the review highlights the tensions between the hopes and expectations of teacher educators and the expectations and experiences of beginning teachers. While this review supports the findings of others that many traditional programs of teacher education have little effect upon the firmly held beliefs of the beginning teachers, it also provides examples of successful programs. Such programs typically build upon the beliefs of pre service teachers and feature systematic and consistent long-term support in a collaborative setting. It is concluded that this body of research has advanced the field in significant ways, offering new directions for research and program reform. The critique of the papers themselves reveals that authors need to pay more careful attenti...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/1170752

A Critical Analysis of the Research on Learning to Teach: Making the Case for an Ecological Perspective on Inquiry

Members of the editorial board of Action Research responded to the question, `Why action research?' Based on their responses and the authors' own experiences as action researchers, this article examines common themes and commitments among action researchers as well as exploring areas of disagreement and important avenues for future exploration. We also use this opportunity to welcome readers of this new journal and to introduce them to members of the editorial board.

Why Action Research

Over the last 20 years, teacher learning has become one of the most important concerns of the educational establishment. It has been more or less assumed that teachers who know more teach better. This \"simple\" idea has governed multiple efforts to improve education in the arenas of policy, research, and practice by focusing on what teachers know or need to know. In this chapter, we do not question this basic idea. Rather, we point out that within various change efforts, there are radically different views of what \"knowing more\" and \"teaching better'' mean. In other words, there are radically different conceptions of teacher learning, including varying images of knowledge; of professional practice; of the necessary and/or potential relationships that exist between the two; of the intellectual, social, and organizational contexts that support teacher learning; and of the ways teacher learning is linked to educational change and the purposes of schooling. Different conceptions of teacher learning—although not always made explicit—lead to very different ideas about how to improve teacher educa­ tion and professional development, how to bring about school and curricular change, and how to assess and license teachers over the course of the professional life span.

Chapter 8: Relationships of Knowledge and Practice: Teacher Learning in Communities:

A Conceptual Framework for Professional Practice Schools Child as Meaning Maker - the Organising Theme for Professional Practice Schools Establishing Professional Schools for Teachers Accountability for Professional Practice Teacher Development in Professional Practice Schools Institutional Standard-Setting in Professional Practice Schools - Initial Considerations Professional Practice Schools in Context - New Mixtures of Institutional Authority.

Professional Practice Schools: Linking Teacher Education and School Reform.

Making Professional Development Schools Work: Politics, Practice, and Policy. The Series on School Reform.

This volume invites readers to look at professional development schools (PDS) through three lenses: policy, politics and practice Chapter authors describe how PDS participants have changed both the kind of work they do and the ways in which they work

Marsha Levine

Papers

Professional Practice Schools: Linking Teacher Education and School Reform.

Making Professional Development Schools Work: Politics, Practice, and Policy. The Series on School Reform.

Making Professional Development Schools Work: Politics, Practice, and Policy

Why Invest in Professional Development Schools

American Business and the Public School: Case Studies of Corporate Involvement in Public Education