Redefining teaching, re‐imagining teacher education

TLDR

Teacher education has historically been split between foundations and methods courses and between university and school contexts. The authors argue that teacher educators should re‑conceptualize teaching by prioritizing clinical practice and incorporating pedagogies of enactment to better support novice teachers. They propose structuring teacher education around core practices that integrate knowledge, skill, and professional identity development through hands‑on practice.

Abstract

In this article, the authors provide an argument for future directions for teacher education, based on a re‐conceptualization of teaching. The authors argue that teacher educators need to attend to the clinical aspects of practice and experiment with how best to help novices develop skilled practice. Taking clinical practice seriously will require teacher educators to add pedagogies of enactment to an existing repertoire of pedagogies of reflection and investigation. In order to make this shift, the authors contend that teacher educators will need to undo a number of historical divisions that underlie the education of teachers. These include the curricular divide between foundations and methods courses, as well as the separation between the university and schools. Finally, the authors propose that teacher education be organized around a core set of practices in which knowledge, skill, and professional identity are developed in the process of learning to practice during professional education.