Teacher Education Restructuring:

Learning Environments And Innovative

Pedagogies
Cheryl Craig, Ph.D.
Professor
Endowed Chair of Urban Education
AERA Fellow
Texas A & M University
 When the winds of
change blow… some
build walls, others
build windmills…
The Winds of
Changes

Teachers and
the Teaching
Profession
 Fountainheads
Teachers: of Curriculum
Decisions
 Teachers
The potential to most significantly
impact youth

Minded individuals (Dewey, 1938)

“Agents of education” (Schwab,

1954/1978)
Schools And Teachers Are Charged With
Conflicting Aims
Students must be prepared for the
present and future while honoring
the past

Teachers must teach students a

common body of knowledge

Teachers and students must support

the educational directives of
governments
Teachers’ “Impossible
Role? Ones” (Schwab)
 Teacher “Impossible
Educators’ Ones”
Roles? (Ben-Peretz)
Teacher Educators’ Impossible Roles
Demands on teacher education are high;
support for teacher educators is low

“The deliverables” policymakers expect are

those that prospective teachers would want
and which teacher educators would desire
 Teacher Candidates

Bring their personal histories,

propensities, desires, and challenges
into educational situations
Take away understandings
unique to their own persons
Teacher Education Restructuring

Learning Environments and

Innovative Pedagogies
Looking Backward:
U.S. Teacher Education To Date
Teacher Education Has Mirrored The
Development Of The Country
A British colony

Independence as a nation

Rise as an international superpower

Three Certainties About Teacher Education

It is necessary

It is driven by supply-and-demand

It is subject to the issues of the day

Teacher Preparation In The U.S.

Normal Schools

Non-degree Granting
Colleges

Colleges of Education
Teaching: “A minor profession”
(Schön)
“The Crisis Of Professions”
(Schön)

A Nation at Risk (ANAR)

Respect accorded
professionals plummeted
No Child Left Behind Act (2002)
 Teacher Education
Public/private universities and colleges

Regional educational offices

School districts

Private consultants

Internet companies
 U.S. Educational Difficulties

The quality of education

Student dropout
Underlying Education Gap

Opportunities

Resources

Poverty
Stronger Teacher Education

Teacher certification

Teacher education reforms

Teacher Education Restructuring

Looking Forward
 Technical Rationalism
(Schön)

Not being able to withstand the

complexities of reality

Not being able to adjust to local

conditions
 Technical
Planning
rationalism Planning

Everything that can be Planning

planned can be realized

Expected output
 Mismatch
High grounds

Academia
Practice
Swampy
lowlands
(Schön, 1983)
As Teacher Education Became More
Formalized And Standardized…
Practical losses

Theoretical gains
 Law

Minor Major
Profession Medicine Profession

Teaching

(Schön, 1983)
Two Different Places That Teachers Deal With…

In-classroom Out-of-classroom
places places

(Craig, 1995)
The Teaching Profession has been Tightly Controlled
& Subject to the Relentless External Manipulation
Of Policymakers….
 The
“The Restructuring
Practical” Of Teacher
Education
 Theory

Practice

Policy
Learning Environments
 “The Practical”

A complex discipline

Group deliberations
 Teacher

Educational
Milieu situations Learner

Subject
Matter
 The Practical

Organic forms of knowing and

intuitive kinds of action

“Ready theory for practical use”

 Educational Policy
“A Grand Story” Of Loosely Connected
Ideas

“Lack Explanatory Power”

Seeing Small; Seeing Big
Seeing Big
• Close up view
• Intricacy
Seeing Small • Intentionality
• Concreteness
• Broader of everyday life
perspective
• Vantage
point of the
system
Practical
 Policy
“A bad eclectic” (Schwab, 1983)

Impossible teacher/teacher educator

roles

Pieces of policy puzzles do not fit

together
 Singapore And Finland
“Thinking schools, learning nation”

“Trust through professionalism”

Students in both countries lead the

way
 Four Pillars Of Education
(UNESCO Report)

Learning to know

Learning to do

Learning to live together

Learning to be
 Life Cycle
Learning

Equitable And
Excellent Futures
For Youth
Innovative Pedagogies
‘Annals and chronicles’

‘Curriculum of life’

‘Rivers of life’
Generative Teacher Development Experiences

Video clips

Narrative portraits of school

contexts

A focus on teaching moments

Teachers’ cultural narratives

Ongoing analysis of techniques

and strategies
Knowing, Doing, Community, And Identity

Thinking and action

Narrative authority
Knowledge
communities
Identity
• The possibility that current, adapted, and new approaches—
through the rigorous enactment of ‘the practical’ in local
settings—will more purposely be built on policies and
theories that are coherent and defensible, not disjointed and
destined for failures as so often is the case.
Any instructionally sound practice can be
corrupted

Teaching without words occurs

No practice can possibly be a “best practice”

Teacher-as-Curriculum-Implementer

Technician Transmitter

Receiver
Consumer

Policy makers mandate changes;

Teachers do what they are told.
Teacher As A Curriculum Maker

Teachers as active agents

Bridges teacher
education and ‘the
practical’
‘The Practical’ Paradigm Shift

Cooperating teachers

Teacher educators

Teacher candidates
Shifting polarized positions: a narrative approach to
teacher education
(Li, Conle & Elbaz-Luwisch, 2010)
‘The Practical’:
Two Fundamentally Different Teaching Places

Formal: Teachers

Informal: Parents and family members

 Practically Oriented Pedagogies
…formal teacher education… [ is], of course,
important. But we do think that, on the whole,
there is more for most teachers to learn by
coming, self-consciously, to grips with their own
teacher knowledge than with what may be
learned [about] knowledge or skills …from
others]… (Connelly & Clandinin)
Practically Oriented Pedagogies

…This work should be done in the context of an

understanding of the significance of informal
teacher education and, therefore, with a
humble spirit and with modest expectations
(Connelly & Clandinin)
Entailments
 First entailment
‘The Practical’…

Is not an elixir

Dependent on the willingness of

human beings

Provides opportunities for both

negative and corrective responses
 Second Entailment
‘The Practical’…

A time-consuming endeavor

Not all educational problems are of

sufficient magnitude to warrant full-
dress deliberation

The most comprehensive of

deliberations need to be reserved for
the most vexing of issues
 Third Entailment
Politically charged issues may require prior walk-
a-mile-in-my-shoes

The pedagogically use of vicarious human

experience

The appropriate channeling of Eros (emotion)

 Fourth Entailment
It is entirely possible certain
perennial problems in the education
of children may result in mandatory
changes in the preparation of all
preservice teachers
 Fifth Entailment
Those in the teaching and teacher education field will need to…

Systematically disclose the contents of

deliberations

Provide field-based evidence for the actions

individually and collectively taken
 Sixth Entailment
The Practical
Questions driving the deliberative process will
hopefully be different ones

The possibility of queries being more closely

related to student learning is high

Hegemonies underlying the questions asked

will be laid bare at the inquiry table
CHALLENGE Technocratic Thinking, WHICH…

Fails to account for the complexities

of educational situations

Gives rise to decisions based on

dubitable evidence

Affects adults and children in

deleterious ways
 Policy
Prescriptions The
Winds Of
Educational Change
Theorists
The Power Of ‘The Practical’
My Recent Experiences
• Editing the ISATT 30th Anniversary Yearbook, From
Teacher Thinking to Teachers and Teaching: The
Evolution of a Research Community (2011-2013)
• Editing the three-volume set of International Teacher
Education: Promising Pedagogies (2013-2015)
• Authoring The structure of teacher education chapter
in the Handbook of International Teacher Education
(2014-2015)
• Delivering keynote addresses around the world since
2007 (Ongoing)
Questions? Queries?