A little history
In 2013 Teachers College committed to the “Teachers College Transformation Initiative” (TCTI). The large purpose of the initiative was to address the pressing need for high quality teacher education oriented towards democracy and equity by means of a concerted focus on something seldom a priority in universities in the US: the education of teacher educators themselves.
The TCTI set out to conduct research on, to engage the wider teacher education community in consideration of, and to develop programmatic responses to this area of need. In 2014, the Journal of Teacher Education published a report on a TCTI-sponsored study undertaken by professors Goodwin (Curriculum & Teaching), Smith (Counseling Psychology), and Souto-Manning (C&T), together with four advanced doctoral students, of almost three hundred teacher educators’ views on, a) the knowledge, skills, and orientations foundational to their own practice, and, b) their own preparation to do teacher education. Among other findings, the study found a wide-spread sense of under-preparedness for the work of teacher education. (See below.)
And in 2014-15, the College’s Sachs Lectures and the Department of Curriculum and Teaching sponsored the “Landscape for Preparing Teacher Educators” lecture and colloquium series, featuring a roster of nationally and internationally distinguished teacher education scholar-practitioners. This series brought into high relief much of the relevant structural, political, and intellectual context for this work. It remains a rich, timely and sometimes prescient set of talks (see below).
In the fall of 2015, the Department of Curriculum and Teaching launched the inter-departmental Doctoral Specialization in Teacher Education. From the beginning, participants in the Specialization were, as they remain, characterized by diversity of background and shared, yet varied, commitments to the practice, study, and transformation, in ways large and small, of teacher education. The over-arching ambition of the Specialization itself was and is to shape and sustain educational practices and conceptions, settings, and roles, that are just, humane, and conducive to human flourishing.
Given the prevailing under-attention, in practice and theory, to the education of teacher educators, the Specialization, the Department, and the College are also committed to sustained study of its processes and results. Thus, during 2016 – 17, TC faculty Goodwin (C&T), Hafeli (A&H-Art Education), Mensah (MST-Science Education), Parkes (A&H-Music Education), Roosevelt (C&T), and Souto-Manning (C&T), in collaboration with Professor Viv Ellis (King’s College London and TC), initiated a “Program of Research into the Education of Teacher Educators.” The study asked who chose the Specialization and why, what conceptions of teacher education and the role of teacher educator were held by student and faculty participants, and more. In the following year, 2017 – 18, Hafeli, Mensah, and Parkes began a related study focusing on “Content-Specific and General Knowledge and Skills as Teacher Educators.” In April of 2018, TC and King’s College launched “CITED” (the Center for Teacher Education and Development), co-directed by Ellis and Souto-Manning. All of these activities provide opportunities for doctoral student participation; all have so far resulted in conferences and conference presentations, with print publications not far off.
To dig a little deeper:
The study of Goodwin et al. may be accessed here.
Reference:
Goodwin, A. L., Smith, L., Souto-Manning, M., Cheruvu, R., Tan, M. Y., Read, R., & Taveras, L. (2014). What should teacher educators know and be able to do? Perspectives from practicing teacher educators. Journal of Teacher Education, 65(4), 284-302.
As mentioned above, in 2014-15, TC’s Sachs Lectures and the Department of Curriculum & Teaching sponsored the “Landscape for Preparing Teacher Educators” colloquium series, featuring a roster of nationally and internationally distinguished teacher education scholar-practitioners, including Wanda Blanchett (Rutgers University), Marilyn Cochran-Smith (Boston College), Viv Ellis (King’s College, London, UK), and Kenneth Zeichner (University of Washington). This series brought into high relief much of the structural, political, and intellectual context within which, for better and worse, teacher education is done in the US today—and within which (with which and against which) it will be changed. Videos of the lectures, and samples of presenters’ scholarly work, may be found here.