Quality In Teaching And Teacher Education

This edited collection brings together papers written by a number of experienced international academics who share a passion for promoting research-informed, high-quality pre-service and in-service teacher education that makes a positive difference to the lives of teachers and their students. Taken together, the contributions to this book represent a call to arms for all who lead education policy at local, regional, and national levels, teacher educators, and schools themselves, to engage in sustained and productive collaboration. Topics include: the centrality of empathy to the classroom, ‘practical theorising’ that is a central part of all good teachers’ armoury; the possibilities for collaborative professionalism which enables them to extend and enrich their thinking, commitment, and capacity for resilience; the pedagogical reasoning, habits of mind, critical reflection, knowledge, and skills that lead to the best classroom practices. Only when the voices of stakeholders at all these levels are brought together, heard, and enacted, are students in all schools in all contexts and in all jurisdictions likely to receive the quality of education to which all are entitled. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Teachers and Teaching.

This volume takes a holistic view of the current trends and challenges in quality and quality assurance in TESOL and teacher education. Bringing together top scholars in the field from all over the world, the text features invaluable international perspectives with the common objective of improving the quality in TESOL and teacher education in constantly changing and challenging educational contexts globally. Grouped into four wide-ranging, thematic sections – on multilingualism, diversity, teacher education, and future challenges – the book addresses new obstacles faced by educational professionals in today’s rapidly changing educational landscape by offering alternatives to quantitative targets. Chapter authors cover a range of contexts and timely issues, including technology in the classroom, culturally relevant teaching, teaching for continuous improvement, professional development, and monitoring and evaluating quality. Providing a forum of discussion on the intricacies, complexities, and challenges related to the urgent question of quality in the field, this book is a must-read for prospective ESL/EFL teachers and teacher educators.

How teachers may be better educated for a changing global world is a challenge that faces many systems of education worldwide. This book addresses key issues of quality and change in teacher education in the context of the new public management achievement agendas which are permeating teacher education structures, cultures and programmes and the work of teacher educators internationally. Graduate schools of education in the United States and the UK, for example, are making fundamental changes in the structures, courses, programs and faculties that prepare beginning teachers each year. Drawing upon examples from the United States, United Kingdom, China, Hong Kong, Australia and elsewhere, its authors provide a unique critical overview of emerging themes and challenges of raising the quality of teaching and the quality of student learning outcomes. They suggest possible ways forward for teachers, teacher educators, researchers and policy-makers as they seek to raise the quality of teaching and student outcomes whilst sustaining their moral purposes and values of equity, inclusion and social justice. Taken together, the chapters contain informed, critical discussions of “normal education” and “teacher education” of “professional standards”, “4+2/+1” post-degree training, “PGDE versus BEd”, integration of subject specializations and professional education. Each one provides new visions of the teacher as a professional and to cultivate high quality teachers in the West and the Greater China region. For all those interested in issues of quality, change and forward movement in teacher education in contexts of policy led reform, this is a must read.

The Association for Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE) is a non-profit European organisation, aimed at enhancing the quality of Teacher Education in Europe, and supporting the professional development of teachers and teacher educators at all levels. The ATEE Spring conference takes place every other year and is organized by the University of Latvia. The Spring conference in 2013 was the sixth such conference. The contents of this book contain the best articles written by participants at the 2013 conference, and present the exchange of ideas between European teacher educators, in addition to experiences, research and ideas from outside Europe. European experience, knowledge and research support the general enhancement of the quality of teacher education throughout the world. As such, this book stimulates dialogue between teacher educators, researchers on teacher education, students, teachers, employers, politicians, supervisory bodies, NGOs and other groups involved in teacher education and research, and innovation in teacher education.

This book brings together and compares the teacher education policies and practices of eight high-achieving countries to consider what creates high-quality teachers in today's world.

This book makes a major contribution to knowledge and theory by drawing implications of teacher effectiveness research for the field of teacher training and professional development. The first part of the book provides a critical review of research on teacher training and professional development and illustrates the limitations of the main approaches to teacher development such as the competence-based and the holistic approach. A dynamic perspective to policy and practice in teacher training and professional development is advocated. The second part of the book provides a critical review of research on teacher effectiveness. The main phases of this field of research are analysed. It is pointed out that teacher factors are presented as being in opposition to one another. An integrated approach in defining quality of teaching is adopted. The importance of taking into account findings of studies investigating differential teacher effectiveness is argued. Another significant limitation of this field of research is that the whole process of searching for teacher effectiveness factor was not able to have a significant impact upon teacher training and professional development. For this reason it is advocated that teacher training and professional development should be focused on how to address grouping of specific teacher factors associated with student learning and on how to help teachers improve their teaching skills by moving from using skills associated with direct teaching only to more advanced skills concerned with new teaching approaches and differentiation of teaching. The book refers to studies conducted in different countries illustrating how the proposed approach can be used by policy and practice in teacher education. Specifically, the book provides evidence supporting the validity of the theoretical framework upon which this approach is based. Moreover, experimental and longitudinal studies supporting the use of this approach for improvement purposes are presented and suggestions for further research utilising and expanding the Dynamic Approach for teacher training and professional development are provided.

This edited book is on the theory and practice of teacher education from the most distinguished and experienced scholars in the field around the world. In this book, they explored the most urgent and significant issues in teacher education in this globalized time. The dealing of these issues can directly impact the quality of teacher education and education in general. How to improve the quality of teacher education is a global issue that many countries, no matter developed or developing, face. This book provides multiple perspectives to address the challenges and possibilities for improving teacher quality. A point needs to further highlight in this book is that the researchers pay more attention to the inner landscape of teachers, such as the issue of identity, sense of person, etc. In this book, the readers can learn the insights and multiple perspectives of the best scholars in teacher education.

Teachers Who Teach Teachers is a major contribution to an emerging literature in which teacher educators are beginning to explore the new challenges facing those who care about the quality of teaching in schools and in teacher education programmes. In this volume the contributors consider the personal development of both new and experienced teacher educators, illustrating just how strongly teacher educators are influenced by their visions and by the challenge to prove themselves in the university setting. They look at ways in which teacher educators have acted to promote their own professional development and study their own practices, including writing as a tool for reflection. Finally the contributors take a broader look at the professional development of teacher educators and the challenge to all teacher educators to consider the tension between rigour and relevance.