Desperately Seeking Solutions

Although the history of teacher education has been braided with the history of educational research for many years, research is currently playing a more prominent role than ever before. In fact, in many of the major 21st-century debates about teacher quality and teacher preparation, the central focus, at least on the surface, is research itself, particularly on whether there is a research base for teacher education. This editorial serves two purposes. First, the editorial provides information about two recent research efforts related to teacher preparation: (a) a major review of what the research says about teacher preparation and its implications for policy published by the Education Commission of the States (ECS) and (b) the research-grounded recommendations for the teacher education curriculum made by the Committee on Teacher Education (CTE) of the National Academy of Education (NAP). These efforts are alike in that each uses research to substantiate and justify its arguments regarding teacher preparation. They are also alike in that each is sponsored by a highly visible organization with an influential voice in the educational community. Notwithstanding these similarities, the editorial also makes the point that although in a certain way both reports are designed to assess the research base for teacher preparation, they are actually addressing quite different questions and using research in very different ways. The editorial argues that explicitly identifying and acknowledging these differences is essential to making sense of their conclusions about research and teacher education, which otherwise may appear contradictory. POLICIES AND PROMISES In July 2003, ECS published the first in its planned series of reports on teaching quality. Authored by the program director of the ECS Teaching Quality Policy Center, Michael Allen, the report (Allen, 2003) draws heavily on a set of three related reports: Wilson, Floden, and Ferrini-Mundy's (2001) analysis of the knowledge and gaps in teacher preparation research; Wilson and Floden's (2003) addendum to their first report, based on additional research nominated by ECS; and Lauer's (2001) secondary analysis of the 2001 Wilson report with an emphasis on policy-related questions. Synthesizing the results of 92 empirical studies judged rigorous and relevant in the Wilson reports (Wilson & Floden, 2003; Wilson et al., 2001), Allen's (2003) synthesis addresses eight questions about teacher preparation that are of particular interest to policy makers at the state and other levels, as well as to educators and researchers. These include questions about the contribution to new teachers' effectiveness of subject matter and pedagogical knowledge, field experiences, alternate routes, preparation for teaching in low-performing schools, stringent program requirements, and accreditation. In addition to answering each of the questions based on the available empirical evidence, the report also rates the degree of confidence policy makers should have in the answers (either strong support, moderate support, limited support, or inconclusive findings) based on the kind, quality, quantity, and consistency of the research. Highest marks are given to studies that shed light on the causal relationships the questions address, especially experimental and quasi-experimental studies or correlational studies using advanced statistical approaches. Allen's (2003) answer to the central question posed in the title of the ECS report (Eight Questions on Teacher Preparation: What Does the Research Say?) can be summarized in two words: very little. In fact, Allen concludes that none of the answers he provides for the eight questions has strong empirical support, and only one conclusion (that solid subject-matter knowledge is important to effective teaching) receives even moderate support--and this only in mathematics, at the secondary school level. Allen finds limited empirical support for these conclusions: Knowing how to teach subject matter is important, preparation in pedagogy can contribute to effective teaching, alternate routes may lead to short-term retention and may produce teachers who are ultimately as effective as others but with more difficulty in the beginning years, and deliberate efforts to prepare teachers for low-performing schools may be helpful. …

Common sense suggests a good teacher matters. Personal experiences with inspirational and challenging teachers reinforce this notion. Research has also shown some teachers have a more significant impact on student achievement than others (McAffrey, D.R., Lockwood, J.R., Koretz, D.L., & Hamilton, L.S., 2003; Rivkin, Haushek, & Kain, 2005; Rockoff, 2004). Teacher quality is seen as a key policy lever to narrow achievement gaps that exist along racial and economic lines. Ensuring the quality profile of the teacher workforce is crucial to extend the democratic mission of public schooling to an unprecedented number of students who are more diverse than at any point in US history. Two recent publications, timed to go with the 2008 legislative sessions, underscore the importance of the teacher quality movement as part of the larger educational reform conversation. Education Week's Quality Counts 2008: Tapping into Teaching issue (Education Week, Jan. 10, 2008) and the National Council for Teacher Quality's (NCTQ) state-by-state Teacher Policy Yearbook (NCTQ, 2007) evaluate state policies and performance in enhancing teacher quality. These reports, aimed at policy makers, describe the teaching profession from 30,000 above ground. To those whose daily work is preparing quality teachers, the terms of the debate feel distant and removed. And, they are. Teacher preparation, particularly university-based teacher preparation, is seen as part of the problem and to be circumvented. Key players shaping the policy debate and funding initiatives are working from outside Schools of Education, and often outside universities altogether. In effect teacher educators have been marginalized and are taking part in their own marginalization. The activity and urgency around teacher quality challenge us to ask this central question: What is the teacher educator's role in enhancing teacher quality? We argue that a more systemic framing is needed, one that examines teacher quality from 30,000 above and on the ground. First, we review definitions and arguments that have framed the movement thus far. DEFINING TEACHER QUALITY Defining teacher quality has been both problematic and elusive. Three terms heard in the discussions are highly qualified teacher, effective teacher, and good teacher. These focus on teacher characteristics or qualifications, teaching outcomes, and teaching practices, respectively. None adequately captures the complexity of a system that supports teacher quality. Legislatively, the federal law, No Child Left Behind (2001) defines highly qualified teacher as having the following qualifications: a bachelor's degree, a state teaching certification or a passing score on the state teacher licensing examination, and subject matter knowledge (Hess & Petrilli, 2006). Critiques of this definition emphasize the overly narrow focus on content preparation, the imprecision of measures for each qualification, and the variability across states to define when a teacher has met criteria. For example, given the wide variation in states' licensure requirements and pathways to certification, holding a state teaching license, though relatively easy to measure from state databases, does not say much about a teacher's knowledge or practice. Overall, the federal definition of highly qualified teacher sets a minimum base for teacher knowledge and focuses on input measures. The term effective teacher generally refers to teachers' ability to foster student achievement. There is a long tradition of research on teacher effectiveness, dating back to the 1960s and 70s (Shulman, 1986). Much of this research examined specific teaching practices (e.g., teachers' questioning strategies) and correlated them with student learning gains. More recent and sophisticated extensions of this line of research include work done by Just for the Kids (http://www .just4kids.org/en/) or by Marzano and colleagues at the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (Marzano, R. …

Almost 2 years ago the editors of Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) announced a special themed issue of the journal on evidence, efficacy, and effectiveness in teacher education. Our goal was to gather a set of manuscripts about some of the current efforts in our field to generate empirical evidence about teacher education programs and pathways and/or to assess the efficacy and effectiveness of teacher candidates and graduates. This double issue of JTE (January/February 2006 and March/April 2006)--the final issues of the journal under the editorship of the Boston College group--includes ten articles on this topic. One way to think about these is in terms of four loose groupings: (1) empirical studies of the impact of differing teacher preparation programs and pathways, drawing on large-scale databases; (2) institutional or cross-institutional efforts to use performance and other outcomes data to assess and improve local practice; (3) analyses that take stock of the state of teacher education regarding the collection and use of evidence; and (4) articles that theorize research in and on teacher education's effectiveness and recommend new directions for the field. The first group--empirical investigations of the impact of programs or pathways--includes three articles. Boyd, Grossman, Lankford, Loeb, and Michelli describe the New York City Pathways study, which uses the New York City teacher workforce database as well as survey and interview data to examine how the features of different pathways lead to different outcomes, including performance, retention, and student achievement. Lasley, Siedentop, and Yinger discuss the Ohio Teacher Quality Partnership, which is based on the efforts of Ohio's 50 colleges and universities, state education authorities, and private corporations. Five studies examine the impact of teacher preparation on student achievement as well as how teachers add value and foster learning within the classroom. Noell and Burns report on data from the pilot study of the Louisiana Teacher Quality Initiative. This project assesses the value teacher preparation adds to pupils' achievement based on a massive multivariate longitudinal database, which is part of the statewide teacher preparation redesign effort. The second group of articles includes descriptions of systematic institutional or cross-institutional efforts to make evidence collection an internal teacher education activity that drives local practice and policy. Pecheone and Chung describe results from California's 2-year, statewide implementation of the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT); they discuss how this can be used to support teacher candidates' learning and improve teacher preparation within and across institutions. Castle, Fox, and Souder compare the efficacy and performance of teachers prepared in professional development schools (PDSs) and non-PDS teacher preparation programs at the same university, based on analysis of student teaching evaluations and portfolio presentations. Darling-Hammond reports on the collection and analysis of a number of different forms of evidence gathered at one institution; she describes how these multiple assessment strategies are used to evaluate and improve the teacher preparation program and critiques the possibilities and limits of each. Articles in the third group take stock of the state of the teacher education profession regarding the collection and use of credible and persuasive evidence. Wineburg reports the results of a survey by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) to find out what kinds of data were being collected by teacher education institutions to meet the current demand for evidence; she calls for professional frameworks to guide the collection of teacher education evidence nationally. Fallon argues that there is too little research on teacher education that uses pupil learning growth as the measure of effectiveness. …

<i>Rejoinder</i> : Misunderstanding the Problem of Out-of-Field Teaching

There is compelling evidence on the effectiveness of bibliotherapy for facilitating one’s development. Arguably, in teacher education, bibliotherapy has been shown to facilitate prospective teachers’ professional development. However, teacher educators may experience difficulties in finding relevant reading to stimulate prospective teachers’ identification process, which is essential if the application of pedagogical bibliotherapy is to be successful. This study is situated in a mathematics education course for prospective elementary school teachers and explores the features of relevant pedagogical reading via analysis of four prospective elementary school teachers’ identification processes with two case descriptions. The identification here relates to the reading of the so-called true stories; prospective teachers read stories of other prospective teachers from the same teacher education context. We outline the recommendations for the selection of reading material when applying pedagogical bibliotherapy in order to assist prospective teachers’ professional development.

Prompted by internal and external criticism, demands for accountability, and an authentic desire to better understand processes associated with learning to teach, the field of teacher education--and more specifically, of teacher preparation--is experiencing a vigorous period of change. In some cases, this has resulted in innovations--such as current proposals to evaluate and regulate teacher education and preparation programs, reform of the requirements to attain qualified teacher status (QTS), and the creation of systems for evaluating teacher effectiveness--that have been enacted without evidence of potential effectiveness. In addition, because different communities or networks operate using different rules and instruments to achieve intended goals, a persistent problem with respect to teacher education policy and practice is a lack of coherence leading to in the system. For instance, in the United States alone, a number of complex networks shape policy and practice in teacher education; these include, but are not limited to, university and non-university-based teacher educators, schools' policies and practices, including mentoring and induction, educational researchers with diverse scholarly backgrounds (e.g., political science, economics), accreditation agencies such as Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), regulatory agencies at the local and federal levels such as the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE), and private advocacy groups such as the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). The resolution of that have emerged out of raising and addressing policy and practice questions in teacher education has in some cases served to move the field forward, but in other cases, has done just the opposite. An international case in point is in England, where the Department for Education has introduced a proposal to reform the current Qualified Teacher Status which, if implemented, would effectively transfer the responsibility to judge when a teacher is qualified from university-based teacher education to the school's headmaster after first undergoing a significant period of school teaching. In some cases, these are far from resolution as advances in related areas of knowledge and practice (e.g., cognitive science) have revealed the enormous complexity inherent in teaching and in learning to teach. These findings bring into question traditional ways of knowing in teacher education as well as current notions of what it means to be an effective teacher and by extension, what constitutes an effective teacher education/preparation program. The role of research at this moment has never been more important as a vehicle that can facilitate learning by examining and reflecting on the construction and resolution of continuously evolving contradictions (Engestrom, 1987, p. 79). Contradictions in Teacher Education and the Role of Research Globally and from a cultural and historical standpoint, teacher education has often involved the resolution of created by questioning, implementing, and reflecting on the system. The most prominent of these are what the goals and purposes of teacher education should be, who should teach and what should teachers know and be able to do, where and how should teachers be prepared, and how quality can be secured, evaluated, and reported. In the sections that follow, each of these issues is unpacked with respect to the need for research evidence to inform policy and practice directed at improving the preparation and ongoing development of effective teachers. What Should Be the Goals of Teacher Education? Much discussion has occurred around whether teacher education's key goal is to prepare teachers as autonomous professionals able to adapt the curriculum to the diverse needs of students guided by a strong moral compass, whether teacher preparation should be focused on equipping teachers with technical expertise capable of effectively enacting the curriculum and managing classrooms (e. …

Teacher education has become an area of considerable interest among policymakers in many countries over recent years. Teacher's knowledge and skills in qualified teaching is of great importance. The main purpose was to study the level and depth of the school mathematics and related teaching knowledge attained by prospective Ukrainian secondary teachers. Some analyses of the study results of prospective Ukrainian secondary teachers are given in the article.

Recent challenges concerning the quality of teachers and the programs that prepare them have resulted in responses from professional organizations that have been more widespread and intense than in the past (Robinson, 2011; Wiseman, 2012). The Blue Ribbon Panel on Clinical Preparation (BRP) formed by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), the merger of NCATE and Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC) into Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) to improve teacher education (Cibulka, 2011), and the Teacher Performance Assessment Initiative which emerged from collaboration between the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT), the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), and American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) member institutions (Robinson, 2011) are examples of ways that professional organizations have responded to the challenges. In general, calls for performance assessments of teaching to provide both formative and summative information about the quality of teachers, teacher candidates, and teacher preparation programs pervade the current discourse on education at every level, including schools and districts, institutions of higher education, state and national policymaking entities, and professional organizations. As a result, a number of performance assessments have emerged that can provide feedback to teacher education programs about the strengths and weaknesses of their candidates as well as evidence for licensure and certification of teachers. For example, Education Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) was designed to provide information for program improvement through the use of a common set of performance assessments for preservice teachers and has also been adopted by states and districts for summative evaluation purposes (http://edtpa.aacte.org/). The multiple performance measures in systems like edTPA improve upon value added models (VAM) by providing information on teaching quality, not just teacher quality or teacher effectiveness, and provide information sooner than might be accomplished by use of VAM alone (Newton, 2010). For this theme issue, we invited research and conceptual articles related to teacher performance assessments specifically as they affect teacher education, including validation studies of measures used in the assessments. We posed a series of questions that we considered important for researchers to address related to performance assessments, including the following: What are the relationships between current performance assessments and teacher education, either conceptually or in terms of outcomes? What do we know about the use of performance assessments in the context of teacher education, and what do we need to know? How do performance assessments of teachers in schools map onto assessment of teacher education programs, or how don't they? What differences may exist across novice teachers and expert teachers with respect to performance assessment, and how does that impact their professional learning? What are the implications of the relationships between for-profit companies, university teacher education programs, researchers, states, and professional organizations with respect to performance assessments of teachers? What is the relationship between assessment criteria and the research on teaching and learning, and what are its implications for teacher education? How do states make decisions to move to statewide teacher assessment systems? What potential conflicts of interest may exist among various stakeholders in performance assessment efforts? How do policies related to performance assessment of teachers affect opportunities for teacher learning? What can we learn from the history of past efforts to evaluate beginning teachers? What is different this time? What do we know about the validity and reliability of performance assessments and why does this matter? …

The theme of accountability currently permeates conversations about education at every level, including teacher education and professional development. In our Call for Manuscripts for this theme issue, we invited empirical or conceptual manuscripts addressing assessment and accountability in teacher education that would move the community forward in considering the topics both more precisely and with greater complexity. The range of suggested subtopics and questions within assessment and accountability in teacher education was broad to elicit a wide range of responses. In general, we asked, Who is to be held accountable? For what? And by whom? As we reviewed the many excellent submissions, one predominant response to these questions centered on value-added modeling (VAM) approaches to accountability. Although this is only one of several answers to the questions we asked, it is one that has important intended and unintended consequences for various stakeholders in teacher education, including beginning teachers, mentor teachers, administrators, teacher educators, higher education institutions, and policy makers. Emergence of Value-Added Models for Teacher Education The rise of interest in VAM for teacher education is related to the search for the definition of teacher quality that has emerged as a primary factor in determination of K-12 student performance, probably as a confluence of a number of events (see Knight, 2011). The Tennessee study (Sanders & Horn, 1998), a landmark study using random assignment of teachers and students to classrooms, firmly established the advantage for students of having a high-quality teacher over a number of years. For many years, educators had struggled with the seemingly intractable socioeconomic factors related to poor student performance. The notion of teacher quality appeared to be manipulable and constituted a viable approach for closing student achievement gaps. Not only do teachers make a difference but their effectiveness can potentially be assessed, rewarded, and improved through recruitment, incentives, and/or professional development. No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top funding and legislation served to popularize the VAM approach for determination of teacher quality. Given the emphasis on teacher professional development as a contributor to teacher quality, the application of VAM approaches for teacher education accountability may have appeared to be an obvious connection to policy makers (see Floden, 2012 [this issue]). Despite the rather limited evidence of the impacts of teacher preparation programs on student achievement (Duckworth, Quinn, & Seligman, 2009), many policy makers concluded that the quality of teacher education preparation, as with individual teachers, can potentially be assessed, rewarded, and improved--or removed if necessary. However, just as VAM applied to determination of individual teacher quality resulted in a number of methodological, ethical, and other concerns, VAM used to determine the quality of teacher education programs carries similar concerns as well as others specific to teacher education. Possibilities and Limitations of VAM for Teacher Education In February 2012, Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) sponsored a Major Forum at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) Annual Meeting in Chicago that featured research using VAM for assessment of the quality of teacher education programs in several states and commentaries that focused participants on both the possibilities as well as the limitations of this approach. Participants agreed that the framing of VAM as a policy issue is important and that much is at stake as we consider the education of teachers and the education of young people in this country. Federal and state governments are investing a great deal of money in value-added assessment systems, and the consequences of policy implementation are complex and significant. …

We are very pleased to write this introductory paper to the special issue of ZDM that provides readers with a glimpse of mathematics education in Korea. In July 2012 (7th–15th), the 12th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-12) takes place at COEX in the center of Seoul, Korea. The ICME is the most important congress in the mathematics education community. It is held once every 4 years under the auspices of the International Commission of Mathematical Instruction (ICMI). The impetus for having this special issue during ICME-12 arose from the scarcity of literature on Korean mathematics education despite Korean students’ high achievement on international comparison studies. Korean students have consistently performed well in recent international assessments of mathematics achievement such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the OECD Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), and the International Mathematics Olympiad. In addition, a recent study titled Mathematics Teaching in the 21st Century (MT21) compared prospective teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about teaching and learning in six participant countries, reporting that Korean prospective secondary mathematics teachers were better prepared than those in other countries (Schmidt et al., 2007; Schmidt, Blomeke, Tatto, 2011). Despite such outstanding performances of Korean students and prospective teachers, very little literature is available on factors that contribute toward it. In addition relatively little is also written about mathematics education in Korea. Many scholars, particularly in the West, are curious about Korea’s excellence in teacher quality and student achievement (e.g. Akiba, LeTendre, & Scribner, 2007; Kang & Hong, 2008). There are, however, a relatively small set of systematic studies that examine various aspects of Korean mathematics education substantively and carefully (Kwon, Park, & Park, 2011). Further, some studies on Asian education have even mistakenly assumed that mathematics education in Korea is almost the same as that in other East Asian countries (e.g., Leung, 2011). Considering teaching and learning as cultural practices (e.g., Alexander, 2000; Fernandez & Yoshida, 2004; Ma, 1999; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999), this could mislead readers to ignore the uniqueness of mathematics education in Korea. As a historical–cultural construct, educational practice of mathematics is situated in a specific cultural context of South Korean society, where there are a range of unique cognitive and normative assumptions around the functions and purposes of education, the kinds of knowledge pursued in school and society, the roles taken by teachers and students. Thus, this special issue not only overviews major aspects of Korean mathematics education, it also addresses the historical and cultural foundations of Korean mathematics education in order to foster an understanding of its practices. This issue, a thematic collection of studies, consists of nine papers that present and discuss emerging issues and challenges of Korean mathematics education with respect to various aspects of mathematics education such as curriculum, teaching practices, student learning, textbooks, assessment, and teacher education. It makes an important contribution by Korean mathematics educators to the international community. O. N. Kwon (&) S. J. Cho Department of Mathematics Education, College of Education, Seoul National University, Gwanak-ro 1, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 151-748, Korea e-mail: onkwon@snu.ac.kr

Teacher education reform in the United States (US) is a crucial part of a broader educational reform intended to improve teaching practice and, thus, student performance (Darling-Hammond, 2005). Teacher education reform has become an international trend (Bates, 2008; Garm & Karlsen, 2004), which in spite of the different national contexts and traditions, shares a set of similar expectations, foci, and even policy interventions (Loomis, Rodriguez, & Tillman, 2008). Underlying these reforms are the assumptions that the quality of teaching is the most important, if not the only, factor that contributes to changes in student learning, which is shaped by factors such as teacher salaries, working conditions, and public support for public schools (Education Policy White Paper Project, 2009). Teacher education is a major factor in improving teaching quality (Delandshere & Petrosky, 2004). Central to the quality of teaching are teachers' deep understanding of what they need to teach and the pedagogical practices that can be used to represent such understanding to students (D. L. Ball, 2000). These have become important foci for reform in teacher education programs in many countries. Policy initiatives to reform teacher education have been very similarly framed, inasmuch as governments have played important roles in establishing standards for what teachers need to know and do in their classrooms and in developing relevant assessments to regulate what students have learned and done (Tatto, 2006). However, when these surface-level similarities are analyzed more deeply, one uncovers competing forces with different expectations, foci, and approaches to teacher education reform (Cochran-Smith, 2001). Each of these approaches reflects different ideologies and appeals to different political interests, but none receives substantial empirical support (Apple, 2001; Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2001; Zeichner & Ndimande, 2008). Add to this that the contexts and cultural traditions of teaching and teacher education provide little opportunity for important teacher education reform initiatives and ideas to be realized (Feiman-Nemser & Floden, 1986; Little, 1990a, 1990b). Consequently, only an insightful and comprehensive understanding of these competing expectations, foci, and approaches to teacher education reform will have utility in informing future policy making and program development. The research community in teaching and teacher education must accept its notable and irreplaceable role in helping to develop such an understanding through an empirical base focused on the processes and outcomes of reform. In this issue of the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE), eight articles address reform and its complexities in the area of teacher education. In this editorial, we first highlight important arguments and findings that emerge from each article. Next, we challenge some of the authors' ideas with support from existing literature and suggest what further conceptual and empirical work is needed to understand dynamic and complex teacher education reform and its contexts. Reform With Competing Expectations for Learning Outcomes and Teaching Underlying various teacher education reforms are two related and seemingly irrefutable assumptions (Delandshere & Petrosky, 2004). First, the quality of teaching is the most important factor that influences student learning. Second, teacher education plays an important role in shaping quality teaching. However, these assumptions sometimes become conceptually ambiguous when used to guide the development of teacher education reform policy and programs. Theoretically speaking, student learning and quality teaching can be defined differently, depending on how one views society and education. Varying definitions imply a range of foci for teacher education reform. Following are three popular conceptions of student learning and teaching quality, as well as their respective foci for teacher education reform, which have made their way into various teacher education reform documents. …

This study aims to examine prospective teachers' ideological beliefs affecting their preparation for diversity in initial teacher education (ITE). The study was designed as qualitative phenomenology around two phenomena experienced by prospective teachers in ITE. The participants determined based on the criterion and maximum variety sampling are six senior students of an ITE program. The researchers collected via individual interviews with a semi-structured interview form. In the study, the interview questions referred to political, gender, and religious ideology categories to make participants state their views more comprehensively and concretely. The data analyzed is based on conventional content analysis in which an inductive approach takes place. The codes were created from data and hierarchized in a constant comparison process. Results showed that prospective teachers have ideological beliefs. Family, school, and social circle seem to be essential factors in building these beliefs. Although the participants indicate university as a critical factor, they emphasize that ITE does not affect their ideological beliefs. In terms of preparation for diversity, the participant has promising intentions like respecting diverse individuals; teachers need to prepare for diversity, and ITE should contribute to this preparation. However, apparent and latent barriers seem to affect their preparation negatively: prospective teachers' conditional respect attitude, being neutral concerns and some latent ideological beliefs on differences, and ITE's current no effect on preparation for diversity. Lastly, suggestions for ITE and further study are provided.

A number of industrialized countries around the world are in the process of creating new directions for education, focused on elementary and secondary schools and the preparation of teachers in universities. Those directions, it has been suggested, will enhance not only the education of children and adolescents, but will lead to expansive improvements in people's social and economic well-being and will advance our technological capacities. Teacher educators and K-12 teachers are now in the midst of coming to grips with a new approach to the education of prospective and veteran teachers. While I am not sanguine about earlier attempts to improve the quality of teacher education programs, I also believe the current emphasis on national standards for P-12 teachers and university faculty in the United States and elsewhere must be challenged and critiqued. Standards Based Teacher Education (SBTE) relies on a set of ideas and commitments that needs to be both understood and critiqued. The SBTE process has approved sets of aligned external standards that encompass specific kinds of performances, outcomes and dispositions, and are linked to accreditation requirements. The process of teaching in this system is based on a technical-rational approach to teaching, and largely ignores social, political, and philosophical understandings. The present paper provides an analysis of SBTE and its shortcomings, as well as suggesting an alternative vision for the preparation of teachers.

Transforming the education system from traditional teaching and learning into blended learning promotes the expansion of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in higher education institutions. Teacher education is also facilitated by offering accessible, flexible, and self-paced learning opportunities. This study aims to highlight the comparison of teacher educators and Prospective teachers’ Attitudes towards E-Learning in MOOCs. Using a descriptive survey method, data were collected through purposive sampling. In this study, a sample of 100 Teacher educators and 100 Prospective teachers was taken, respectively. An attitude scale was developed for both teacher educators and Prospective teachers. The findings revealed that there is no significant difference between the attitudes of teacher educators and Prospective teachers’ attitudes towards E-learning in MOOCs. The results have implications for instructional designers, policymakers, and teacher education institutions regarding the optimal utilization of MOOCs in pre-service teacher education.

The research presented in this paper aims to shed light on the complex role of mathematics teacher educators who led courses for prospective mathematics teachers. Theoretically, the research combines the documentational approach to didactics and the meta-didactical transposition frameworks, complementing the study with the analysis of the teacher educators’ beliefs about the prospective teachers’ needs. The methodology entails a comparative case study related to two courses, taking place in quite different contexts, led by the two authors independently, and a collaborative self-study of teacher education approach, based on eight reciprocal semi-structured interviews between the authors. The result is a holistic model of mathematics teacher educators’ work that takes into account their practices, including the design of teaching materials based on a variety of resources, justifying discourses and personal beliefs. This can deepen our insight into the expertise of mathematics teacher educators and, prospectively, can be fruitful for their professional development.