Transforming Teacher Education: Lessons in Professional Development

(Hardback)

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Teacher professional development requires a dynamic vision of education. The authors argue that teaching and teacher education are moral rather than technical or instrumental endeavors, and describe a highly innovative master's program for practicing teachers founded in 1992. By describing important aspects of the program, the authors demonstrate that a moral vision can be enacted in practice, despite many constraints and challenges. They also show that any serious attempt to change practice will, of course, be unwieldy, contentious, and subject to sudden shocks and reversals as well as successes. The work also provides a compelling and detailed account of the institutional and political conditions in higher education that militate against innovations in teacher education and professional development. Authors of the chapters include the former director of the innovation, the faculty who were involved in teaching and administering the program, and teachers who studied with them. Each chapter examines the practices pedagogically, ideologically, morally, and professionally through the perspectives of people intimately involved with the program.

Reviews

"This wide-ranging, spirited book will be of interest to anyone who wants to learn more about the inner workings of educational reform. With teacher development as their prime focus, the authors attend to every aspect of reform. They describe the vision that guided their effort, their attempts to build a supportive institutional structure, their curricular and pedagogical undertakings, and their attempts to communicate and collaborate with the many persons who cross the stage of the drama they describe. Any reader who follows their account to the end will no longer be able to think about educational reform, especially in teacher education, in quite the same way." David Hansen, from the foreword

Author Bio

HUGH T. SOCKETT is Professor of Education at George Mason University. ELIZABETH K. DEMULDER is Associate Professor of Initiatives in Educational Transformation in the Graduate School of Education at George Mason University. PAMELA C. LEPAGE is Assistant Professor of Initiatives in Educational Transformation in the Graduate School of Education at George Mason University. DIANE R. WOOD is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Southern Maine.