Transforming Teacher Education

Teacher education has a central role in the improvement of educational systems around the world but what do the teacher educators in universities and colleges actually do? Day-to-day, how do they support the learning and development of the thousands of new teachers we need every year? And why does this matter? Drawing on recent research by the authors, situated in the growing international literature, Transforming Teacher Education puts these questions in cultural and historical context and offers a practical answer in the form of an original agenda for the transformation of current conditions in teacher education with future designs for practice. Viv Ellis and Jane McNicholl argue that teacher education needs to be transformed so as to take advantage of the unique structural connections that exist between schools and universities in countries like England (represented by the notion of 'partnership') and the USA (with the example of professional development schools) by capitalising on the networks of expertise within and between these different organisations to produce powerful new forms of knowledge. They offer suggestions for future designs for teacher education, drawing not only on the latest research in teacher learning and development but from across the social sciences.