Reconstructing Teacher Education

This book maps out a new paradigm of teacher education an, by implication, professional education generally. The book opens with two alternative theories of teacher education and training and explains the concepts and assumptions on which they rest including beliefs about the nature and role of education in society. It then proposes a 'natural science' paradigm and its implications for establishing a coherent view of teacher education. Subsequent chapters indicate the professional implications of such a model.

One of the greatest resources a school has is its staff. How teachers themselves, and their work, are defined are therefore matters of utmost importance. Major trends of increased control and 'new mangerialism' are occurring in most OECD countries, radically altering both the content and form of teacher education. This book outlines recent changes in teacher education and professional development and, by drawing on recent research findings, explores the positive and negative impacts on the nature of teaching and the shape of the profession.

This book examines agentic approaches by which teacher educators navigate a highly regulated environment. It investigates how teacher educators are responding to such regulation by employing approaches such as exploratory and case study research designs. This book analyzes qualitative and quantitative data to understand the diverse, innovative and critical perspectives of teacher educators who are guided by state and federal level initiatives to enhance the quality Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs. Prominent educational theoretical perspectives are also used in this book to inform data analysis and to illuminate the empirically based findings. This book showcases research-informed insights for the global education community from leading researchers from across a number of teacher education institutions, locally and otherwise. By adopting an ‘activist’ approach, this book positions teacher educators’ research and contribution to the field as agentive and pro-active.

This collection explores the changing meaning and enactments of care in teacher education in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, from preservice teachers and teacher candidates to in-service teachers and education faculty. Over fifty international teacher educators explore the complicated concept of care in different content areas, learning contexts, and communities of learners, using different conceptual frameworks and methodological orientations. Throughout, this book situates research and reflection at the nexus of teacher education, care, and COVID-19 in order to reconstruct care in post-pandemic teacher education. Timely and incisive, this collection raises important questions and offers relevant examinations to consider how post-pandemic teacher education as a field will move forward in preparing and caring for those who will, in turn, care for their future students. The book is essential reading for teacher educators, scholars, and anyone interested in the notion of care in education.

Manuscripts have played a crucial role in the educational practices of virtually all cultures that have a history of using them. As learning and teaching tools, manuscripts become primary witnesses for reconstructing and studying didactic and research activities and methodologies from elementary levels to the most advanced. The present volume investigates the relation between manuscripts and educational practices focusing on four particular research topics: educational settings: teachers, students and their manuscripts; organising knowledge: syllabi; exegetical practices: annotations; modifying tradition: adaptations. The volume offers a number of case studies stretching across geophysical boundaries from Western Europe to South-East Asia, with a time span ranging from the second millennium BCE to the twentieth century CE.

Drawing on elements of progressive education, existential theory, feminist pedagogy, and values education, critical humanism combines the holistic-psychological concerns of humanistic education with the sociopolitical contextualization of critical pedagogy. Developed over the past seventeen years in one of North America's most experimental postsecondary programs, The New School of Dawson College, this theory and practice responds to both the personal and the political needs of students. Reconstructing Education is at once a review of this century's educational theories, an account of the work at the school, and an empowering illustration of the way in which schools can incite the motivation of students and encourage them to become active members in a truly democratic society. The case study chapters on The New School give concrete examples of how this philosophy is manifested in the school's methodology, structure, and pedagogy and draws heavily on the written work of teachers and students. To formulate a similar approach for a specific school, it is essential to combine a rigorous analysis of existing educational models with the dialectical process of creating and recreating a new model defined by the articulation of both learners' and teachers' affective, cognitive, and socially constructed needs. This is a valuable book for anyone concerned with alternative approaches to education and for courses on educational theory or the philosophy of education.

Religious Education is now identified as a shortage subject as a growing number of pupils in schools opt for it. The growing emphasis on children's moral and spiritual education, the DfEE's hunt for new teachers, OFSTED's calls for improvement and reinforced links with philosophy have pushed the subject into the spotlight. Based on research and partnership with schools this book examines and explains : * the role of Religious Education in the curriculum * the role of spirituality in children's lives * better teaching practice, giving practical examples.