Editorial
Journal of Teacher Education
Understanding Teacher Education Reform
Jian Wang1, Sandra J. Odell1, Cari L. Klecka1,
Elizabeth Spalding1, and Emily Lin1
Teacher education reform in the United States (US) is a cru-
cial 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 tradi-
tions, 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, fac-
tor that contributes to changes in student learning, which is
shaped by factors such as teacher salaries, working condi-
tions, and public support for public schools (Education Pol-
icy White Paper Project, 2009). Teacher education is a major
factor in improving teaching quality (Delandshere &
Petrosky, 2004). Central to the quality of teaching are teach-
ers’ 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 pro-
grams 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 regu-
late what students have learned and done (Tatto, 2006).
However, when these surface-level similarities are ana-
lyzed more deeply, one uncovers competing forces with dif-
ferent 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 & Ndi-
mande, 2008). Add to this that the contexts and cultural tradi-
tions 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 expecta-
tions, 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 empiri-
cal base focused on the processes and outcomes of reform.
61(5) 395­–402
© 2010 by the American Association
of College for Teacher Education
Reprints and permission: http://www.
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0022487110384219
http://jte.sagepub.com
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 develop-
ment 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 edu-
cation reform documents.
One conception is that for reasons of social justice and
equal opportunity for social mobility, the same learning out-
comes are expected for students who differ along many
dimensions, such as race, culture, gender, ethnicity, lan-
guage, socioeconomic status, and ableness (Kohl, 1996). In
reality, many schools in our educational system, especially
urban schools, have students who are minority, second lan-
guage learners, and in poverty and whose learning outcomes
1
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA
Corresponding Editor:
Jian Wang, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of
Education, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Parkway Box
453005, Las Vegas NV 89154-3005
Email: wangj2@unlv.nevada.edu
396 Journal of Teacher Education 61(5)
are not comparable to those for students in other schools
(Banks et al., 2005; Haberman, 1991; Ladson-Billings,
1999). The quality of teaching in these schools is seen as
needing improvement, with special attention given to cul-
tural relevance and the special characteristics of the students
(Ladson-Billings, 2001; Villegas & Lucas, 2002). Teacher
education is then called on to prepare teachers with a deeper
understanding of the needs and characteristics of these stu-
dents, relevant moral and social responsibility, and culturally
relevant knowledge and skills (Zeichner & Hoeft, 1996).
This implies the need to develop a more democratic knowl-
edge system in teacher education where academic, school-
based, and community-based knowledge come together in
new ways to develop teacher preparation that better prepares
teachers to teach specific groups of students who are now
underserved by our schools.
Consistent with this, Jimenez and Rose in this JTE issue
suggest a special focus for teacher education reform at the
program level. They propose that teacher education prepare
preservice teachers who can build “healthy and productive”
teaching/learning relationships with English language learn-
ers who have traditionally not received quality education in
their US schools. With a careful review of the literature as
the foundation, they argue that such a relationship is crucial
for teachers to teach English language learners and to
improve their academic performance. They specifically pro-
pose several approaches to teacher education that could help
preservice teachers develop a set of tools that are useful in
moving them toward developing these productive relation-
ships with their students.
However, this focus for teaching and teacher education
reform has some conceptual and practical challenges. Con-
ceptually, some might argue that there is a substantial differ-
ence between expecting teachers to help marginalized
children to perform in ways defined by existing school sys-
tems (A. F. Ball, 2009) and expecting teachers to educate
these children to examine critically the unequal social, eco-
nomic, political, and educational contexts where they are
situated to generate changes in these contexts for social jus-
tice (Freire, 1970). Furthermore, those who see the expecta-
tions for academic achievement and social justice as
incompatible may formulate differentiated goals, content,
and approaches to teacher education. Yet neither approach
has substantial evidence to suggest that a reliable correlation
exists between the kinds of teaching each promotes and
expected student learning outcomes.
At a practical level, some may infer that culturally respon-
sive teaching calls for different kinds of instruction for dif-
ferent groups of students. We see such thinking both in recent
attempts at offering single-sex schools and classes based on
assumptions that boys and girls benefit from differing class-
room environments and instructional practices (Sadker &
Zittleman, 2005) and in classroom instruction designed some
two decades ago to accommodate stereotypical views of
minority children’s learning styles (McCarty, Wallace,
Lynch, & Benally, 1991), which proved to be detrimental to
minority student learning and served to maintain the status
quo (Moll & Gonzalez, 1994). This approach is clearly coun-
terproductive to helping different groups of students learn to
respect and understand each other through learning together.
It would be a mistake to think that teacher education pro-
grams should either prepare teachers for particular groups of
students or face the daunting task of preparing candidates to
teach in various ways, each tailored to a particular group of
students. Either choice is impractical (and likely inappropri-
ate) when teacher education programs have a short duration
and limited resources and preservice teachers are free to
decide where they want to teach in the existing job market.
A second conception is that more competitive learning
outcomes for US students in particular content areas, espe-
cially mathematics and science, are often expected to
enhance social efficiency and economic competitiveness
(Beaton, Martin, et al., 1996; Beaton, Mullis, et al., 1996;
Programme for International Student Assessment, 2004,
2007; Stevenson et al., 1990). From the often assumed rela-
tionship between teaching quality and learning outcomes, it
is possible to derive that teaching quality in our schools is
unable to produce satisfactory student learning outcomes in
the important content areas of mathematics and science com-
pared with teaching quality in countries with high student
mathematics and science performance (Stevenson & Stigler,
1992; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). Thus, teacher education
needs to be reformed to increase teaching quality by devel-
oping teachers’ understanding about important content, such
as mathematics and science, proper pedagogical representa-
tions, and relevant dispositions and skills (D. L. Ball, 2000;
Ball & McDiarmid, 1989). These desiderata are clearly
shown in various curriculum and teacher education stan-
dards and reform documents (National Board for Profes-
sional Teaching Standards, 2002; National Council for
Accreditation of Teacher Education, 2000; National Council
of Teachers of Mathematics, 2000; National Research Coun-
cil, 1989, 1996).
Using the notion of alchemy as a guiding concept for
analysis, in this issue Popkewitz pursues a related line of
thinking about teacher education by positing a disconnect
between an educational psychology-based approach to
developing school curriculum and a subject-derived approach
to curriculum development. He argues that the educational
psychology-based principles used historically have sub-
verted the understanding of disciplinary knowledge.
Although useful in understanding child development, in his
view, these psychological principles actually narrow the
range of reflection and action that teacher education reform
offers to teacher candidates by subjugating disciplinary prin-
ciples. Using mathematics, science, and technology as exam-
ples, he suggests an alternative approach to transform basic
disciplinary tenets into educational curriculum.
Wang et al. 397
Extending Popkewitz’s argument more generally to disci-
plinary-focused teacher education reform has its own con-
ceptual and evidentiary challenges. Conceptually speaking,
interpreting the lower performance of US students in math-
ematics and science as a failure of disciplinary focus in
teaching is often used to shift public blame away from the
failures of business and social policy decisions (Berliner,
2009; Berliner & Biddle, 1995; Bracey, 1996). Although it
seems unarguable that teachers should be masters of the dis-
ciplines that they teach, the evidence actually supporting a
direct relationship between teachers’ subject matter knowl-
edge and student performance is limited. Indeed, recent stud-
ies have begun to suggest that teachers’ subject knowledge
and their understanding of children’s subject matter under-
standing play limited roles in making substantial differences
in student mathematics performance (Hill, Rowan, & Ball,
2005; Kersting, Givvin, Sotelo, & Stigler, 2010).
A third guiding conception has been that since educa-
tional reform should prepare citizens for the future, it is
appropriate to expect learning outcomes for students based
on what we perceive to be the imperative needs of our future
society. The educational needs in a global society have cer-
tainly come to the forefront in the educational reform con-
versation (Stromquist, 2002; Stromquist & Monkman,
2000). One assertion is that teachers in existing schools
across the globe are not well prepared with relevant concep-
tions, knowledge, and skills to teach students to adapt to
these inevitable needs of social transformation (Committee
for Economic Development, 2006; National Governors’
Association, 2008). It is an obvious implication that teacher
education needs to be reformed to prepare teachers with
these conceptions, knowledge, and skills (Ben-Peretz, 2001;
Elliott, 1999; Longview Foundation, 2008; Tatto, 2006).
This line of thinking is also reflected in various reform docu-
ments and government policies related directly to teaching
and teacher education reform (National Commission on
Excellence in Education, 1983; National Commission on
Teaching and America’s Future, 1996; National Governor’s
Association, 1989).
Zhao’s article in this JTE issue specifically conceptual-
izes some of the imperative educational needs for students in
schools, given the powerful influence of globalization. They
include students’ global competitiveness for jobs, language
competence that would allow them to work cross-culturally,
and an ability to view things globally. Zhao argues that to
engender globally competent students, teachers need to learn
how to work with international testing programs, understand
best practices in the world, and teach diverse student popula-
tions. He proposes that teacher education reform needs to be
guided by a comprehensive plan that would: stress the impor-
tance of global education in teacher education policy devel-
opment at the national, state, and local levels; shift the
mind-set of teacher education from a service for the local
community to that for global needs; set up explicit and
well-articulated expectations for all teacher candidates to be
globally competent; realign our programs to the needs of
education in a global society and develop comprehensive
and coherent global curricula; and build university-wide,
P-12 schools and community and international partnerships
to deliver the programs.
A different interpretation of teacher education reform in a
global society would result if globalization were perceived as
the result of political and business decisions that were devel-
oped to help multinational corporations pursue maximum prof-
its to the possible detriment of democracy and social equality
(McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2001). The latter would suggest
that teacher education should be reformed to prepare teachers to
learn to teach against such political/economic influences and to
help their students actively to participate in and to construct the
democratic processes that can be used to shape positively their
own futures (Dewey, 1916). Regardless of one’s conceptualiza-
tion of the influence of globalization on teacher education, it
should be recognized that as of yet, insufficient conceptual and
empirical work exists to inform teacher education reform in the
global context.
Taken altogether, the above three conceptualizations of
teaching and teacher education reform engender imperative,
daunting, and yet inconsistent expectations for teacher edu-
cation reform, making it an ambiguous and potentially
impossible task for teacher education programs to imple-
ment reform (Ben-Peretz, 2001; Kennedy, 2010). They also
imply very different goals and approaches with little empiri-
cal support and very limited resources (Cochran-Smith &
Fries, 2001).
In bringing more clarity and reliability to teacher educa-
tion reform, the teacher education research community has
several conceptual, theoretical, and empirical challenges. It
is important to develop a clear conception of the learning
outcomes expected in each subject area through careful syn-
thesis across various perspectives rather than taking an
either/or conceptual approach.1 In addition, the expected
learning outcomes for students in schools need to be
sequenced as a continuum with careful attention to the cul-
tures and traditions of teaching in various contexts. The out-
comes can be used to help teachers develop systematic
objectives for teaching across contexts and work gradually
from those objectives toward the ultimate outcomes of stu-
dent learning. Teaching practices that most likely contribute
to defined student learning outcomes need to be developed
carefully and would provide important goals and expecta-
tions for the reform of teacher education.
As conceptualizations guide teacher education reform,
systemic and longitudinal empirical studies need to be devel-
oped to substantiate theoretical assumptions underlying the
conceptualizations. Based on findings from empirical stud-
ies, those identified student and teacher learning outcomes
and relevant standards and policies can be further and con-
tinually refined, modified, and revised.
398 Journal of Teacher Education 61(5)
Different Approaches to Reform
It is an obviously complicated task to identify clear expecta-
tions for student learning outcomes and relevant teaching
practices, along with well-researched and supported knowl-
edge, conceptual, and skill bases that underlie them. To
translate learning and teaching outcomes into specific goals
and objectives and to guide the design and implementation
of programs, curricula, learning experiences, and teaching
processes are also difficult tasks. As examples of the difficul-
ties, challenges occur at least in the following three areas.
One area is deciding on a starting point and selecting
important priorities for teacher education reform. Consider
Futrell’s article in this issue of JTE. After reviewing five
decades of educational reform history in the US, she came to
the conclusion that teaching and teacher education reform
have never been well coordinated. Futrell used Finland as an
example to show how such coordination is crucial for pre-
paring teachers to teach students with evermore diverse cul-
tural, racial, and social backgrounds how to think, act, adapt
and communicate creatively for a complex and changing
world. She points out several aspects of teacher education
that need to be transformed to coordinate the reform of
teaching and teacher education. They include developing
national standards for education, establishing clinical train-
ing requirements for accrediting teacher education programs,
forming professional learning communities among teachers
and in teacher education programs, expanding and enhanc-
ing teaching as a profession, utilizing technologies more
effectively as pedagogical tools, and turning to teacher edu-
cation reform as an integral component of transforming the
entire system of education.
However, the challenge of such coordinated reform may
not be whether it is important to do but, rather, whether it is
possible to do. A related challenge is whether stakeholders
are willing and able to tolerate significant monetary and time
costs to implement such reform when contemporary contexts
reveal that competing ideas of reform have often come and
gone with little lasting impact (Kennedy, 2010; Little,
1990b). Cuban (1993) also reviewed the history of teaching
reform during the past century in the US and reported that
the failure of teaching reform has not been because it is
unimportant, but rather because reformers have been unable
to anchor reforms firmly in the culture of teaching, organiza-
tion of schools, and traditions of education. According to
several scholars, educational reform is not likely to happen
in a transformational episode, but rather as a result of “tin-
kering” forward, a point that Sykes and colleagues reaffirm
in their article in this issue (discussed later).
Challenges also occur in the area of conceptualizing and
designing consistent practices for teacher education pro-
grams. In her article in this issue, Diez focuses on using
questions derived from reform-minded teaching and learning
to design teacher preparation programs and curriculum.
These questions include: (a) At the program level, have
teacher candidates learned what we taught them? Does their
performance demonstrate the outcomes of our program? (b)
At the inservice level, are they doing what they learned? Is
what they’re doing helping students learn? She points out
many of the pitfalls of developing teacher preparation pro-
grams around answering such questions. She argues for
improving teaching practice in ongoing ways, working
effectively with other stakeholders in the communities of
policy and practice, and using effective assessment and good
teaching that make expected differences for both teacher
candidates and P-12 students.
Although answering these questions certainly is impor-
tant for teacher education programs to link what teachers
learn both to what they are able to do and then to the expected
outcomes of students in schools, it is not sufficient to develop
such linkage without the support of a reliable theory of how
teachers learn (Feiman-Nemser, 1983). Currently, shared
and reliable knowledge about how teachers learn to teach is
still in the hypothetical stage with various competing per-
spectives and with insufficient empirical bases (Cochran-
Smith & Lytle, 1999; Feiman-Nemser & Remillard, 1996:
Lin, Wang, Klecka, Odell, & Spalding, 2010). For example,
an implicit assumption of how teachers learn that underlies
Diez’s series of questions is that teachers acquire knowledge
in their teacher education programs and then apply what they
learn in a consistent manner (Grossman, 1990). Such a view
is clearly different from the one in which teacher learning is
seen as occurring in a defined continuum across a profes-
sional career, where at each stage teachers are learners who
continue to construct and reconstruct their teaching expertise
in the specific contexts where they teach and learn (Feiman-
Nemser, 2001). The development of this theory becomes an
even more complicated task in a context where teaching is
no longer viewed as a process of content transmission and
where teachers need to develop adaptive expertise to meet
the learning needs of their students.
Challenges to teacher education reform can also occur in
the area of program implementation. In this issue, Peck, Gal-
lucci, and Sloan draw on qualitative data from a teacher edu-
cation program and carefully document a responsive
approach to transforming teacher preparation by aligning
their program with prescriptive state-level mandates through
a negotiation process. They analyze the dilemmas that the
faculty in the program faced and had to resolve. For exam-
ple, they needed to maintain their autonomy and integrity in
designing and implementing the program while ensuring that
they did not lose program accreditation. The study showed
that changing even one program was a very difficult and
complex process where results were both potentially positive
and negative when substantial attention was paid to local
values and concerns as well as to reform goals.
Except for a few isolated cases such as the Peck et al. study,
the existing literature on teacher education reform offers little
Wang et al. 399
empirically based understanding about what it takes to imple-
ment reform ideals into teacher education in various contexts
and institutions. Moreover, little is known about immediate and
long-term consequences of these reforms for different stake-
holders. As reform of teacher education is implemented in dif-
ferent teacher education institutions, systemic and long-term
empirical studies need to be developed to determine whether
intended results were achieved and to identify any unintended
effects. Such knowledge is important so that conceptions for
reforming teacher education programs can be carefully revised,
rejected, or strengthened. Experience from successful reform
implementation can then be synthesized to inform subsequent
implementation, and positive effects can be maximized, whereas
serious and wasteful negative effects of the reform can be con-
trolled or avoided.
Reform in a Complex and Changing
Context
It is our contention that teacher education reform cannot be
successful without a serious understanding of the contexts in
which educational reform is situated. What are these con-
texts and their characteristics? How do these contexts influ-
ence the process and outcomes of teacher education reform?
What are the consequences of these contextual influences for
different stakeholders in teacher education reform? These
are central questions, the answers to which could lead to
understanding better the relationship between teacher educa-
tion reform and its contextual influences.
In their article in this issue, Sykes, Bird, and Kennedy con-
ceptualize three kinds of contextual difficulties that current
efforts toward teacher education reform have to face. First,
teaching is an internally differentiated occupation and con-
forms to cultural scripts that encourage the conservation of
past practices more than the pursuit of the reform ideals of
excellence and equity. Concomitantly, research has yet to pro-
duce reliable knowledge that links teaching practice to
expected outcomes. Thus, the authors argue that teacher edu-
cation reform is not anchored firmly in teaching practice that
is informed by codified knowledge. Second, teacher education
programs have relatively short durations and modest resources
without a shared view of occupational competence or reliable
knowledge of teacher learning on which to build program con-
tent, sequence, and character. Such contexts make it difficult
to sustain studies on teacher education reform that are compre-
hensively analytic and longitudinal. Third, a consistent link
between teacher education and teaching is often compromised
by inconsistent influences from teacher candidates’ place-
ments and discrepancies between what they learned in their
programs and experienced in their clinical practice. Given
these contextual problems, the authors suggest that the invest-
ment in improving teaching through improving teacher educa-
tion should be discouraged. Instead, we need to look to the
power of evaluation and assessment practices as well as
markets and competition to weed out ineffective teachers,
reward high performers, place qualified teachers in high-needs
schools, and increase accountability for outcomes in programs
that prepare teachers.
As Sykes, Bird, and Kennedy point out, many contextual
influences on outcome-based teacher education and teaching
are assumed to exist, based more on anecdotal observation
and experiences than verified with the support of empirical
evidence. Accordingly, reforming teaching and teacher edu-
cation based on these assumptions needs to be carefully
examined and cautiously pursued to avoid costly conse-
quences or miss precious opportunities for change. Indeed,
research on contextual factors and their relationship in influ-
encing the processes and results of teacher education reform
is not yet definitive (Putnam & Borko, 2000).
Not only are the contextual challenges that teacher educa-
tion programs face in reform efforts related to the nature of
teaching professionals, school systems, and their students,
but these contextual factors are constantly changing, which
also influences approaches to reform work. We lack a deeper
understanding of how this dynamic of constant change
affects the relationship between reform efforts and contex-
tual factors (Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2010).
In his case study in this issue, Brown investigated the impact
of the experiences that a group of preservice teachers had with
high-stakes, standards-based education systems on their learn-
ing to teach. He found that these preservice teachers (a) entered
their teacher education program with an understanding that a
high-stakes testing system was driving public school teachers’
instruction and students’ learning and (b) knew that they had to
incorporate the mandated curriculum into their teaching. Their
field experiences further showed them that knowing how to
teach the mandated curriculum and putting that knowledge into
practice were difficult tasks. Brown’s study demonstrates that
the changing societal contexts for learning need to be taken into
consideration when designing and reforming programs in
teacher education.
At least two suggestions can readily be derived from the
Brown study. First, it suggests to us a possible reciprocal
relationship between teacher education reform efforts and
the contexts in which these reform efforts are implemented.
Such influences have not drawn substantial attention in the
teacher education literature, even though many reform
efforts have been implemented during the past 20 years. Sec-
ond, it suggests that the systematic and long-term monitoring
of the relationship between reform efforts and their contexts
is important and necessary for continuously adjusting teacher
education reform across time.
Conclusion
In this editorial, we used the extant literature, including arti-
cles in this issue of JTE, to argue that teacher education is a
complicated process that is influenced by competing
400 Journal of Teacher Education 61(5)
expectations and foci and shaped by the complex nature of the
contexts in which teachers and teacher educators work in the
US and throughout the world. Work on developing agreement
about what learning outcomes we are expected to produce in
teaching and, thus, in teacher education has begun but is not
yet completed. Learning outcomes have not been carefully
conceptualized into working theories that can be used to guide
the design and implementation of teacher education programs.
In addition, we know little about the implementation process
of teacher education reforms in various teacher education
institutions and have even less evidence for the results of these
implementations. If teacher education is central to teaching
reform and to the quality of teaching and student learning, as
many including us believe, we need to invest still more in the
conceptual, empirical, systematic, and sustained inquiry about
teacher education reform. The editorial and articles we pub-
lished in this issue are an invitation and, hopefully, an inspira-
tion for your participation in this inquiry.
Acknowledgment
We acknowledge and thank Ken Zeichner, University of Washing-
ton, for his most helpful and insightful comments on an earlier draft
of this editorial.
Note
1. This work, spearheaded by the Council of Chief State Schools’
Officers and the National Governors’ Association, is well
underway. Drafts of the Common Core Standards in English,
language arts, and mathematics have been disseminated for
public comment (http://www.corestandards.org).
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