Harvard Education Press

Transforming Teacher Education
Reflections from the Field

Edited by David Carroll, Helen Featherstone, Joseph Featherstone, Sharon Feiman-Nemser, and Dirck Roosevelt

Transforming Teacher Education offers an intimate, reflective account of the development of the renowned Team One teacher education program at Michigan State University. Over a ten-year period, Team One established a first-rate reputation as a beacon of progressive teacher education. In this book, the creators of Team One describe their ongoing efforts to nurture and sustain a teacher education program that could serve as a learning community for students, faculty, and administrators alike. The book weaves together diverse voices to provide a detailed portrait of the ongoing transformation of teachers and students as they learn together.

At a time when traditional teacher education is coming under fire, this book presents a powerful vision of what teacher education could and should be and offers an impassioned rationale for engaging in the intellectually demanding work of professional teacher education.

Praise:

“A breathtaking book. With all the talk about ‘doing something’ about teacher education, here is a rare example of a book that actually does something. It offers a fascinating opportunity to play with the critical ideas confronting us as educators. Transforming Teacher Education must get into the hands of those thinking seriously about educating America.”
—Deborah Meier, Senior Scholar and Adjunct Professor, Steinhardt School of Education, New York University

“The appearance of a new book by this team of extraordinarily thoughtful teacher educators is an event worth celebrating. The book details what it took to accomplish what many thought could not be done—creating and sustaining a model of teacher education, rooted in a vibrant intellectual and professional community, in the context of a large, bureaucratic public university. We learn from Transforming Teacher Education what it takes to create ambitious programmatic change, and all the pleasures and challenges entailed in such an effort.”
—Pam Grossman, Professor of Education, Stanford University

“At last! A fascinating, deep, and honest analysis of the reform effort of a large teacher education program, using principles, theories, and values from small, elite boutique programs. This book describes the successes, dilemmas, and nightmares of the process, interspersing research, analysis, and reflection. It should be required reading for any teacher education program undergoing major reform.”
—Virginia Richardson, Professor of Education, School of Education, University of Michigan

“Teacher educators in programs large and small will be inspired and instructed by this book. The members of Team One remind us of the folly of those who believe that there are shortcuts to preparing teachers to do well the difficult work confronting us today.”
—Marvin Hoffman, Founding Director, North Kenwood Oakland Charter School, and Associate Director, Urban Teacher Education Program, University of Chicago

"This clearly written and insightful l book tells the story of the reform of teacher education at Michigan State in the 1980s and 1990s. In large research intensve universities, teacher education is often low in the list of institutional priorities. This work described in this book clearly demonstrates how a top reserach university can develop high quality and cutting edge teacher education programs that play a large role in influencing teacher education across the nation. This book is must reading for all who are intersted in teacher education reform. The lessons learned by these teacher educators about the complexities of creating genuine and progressive reofrm in a large university like Michigan State can be of benefit to us all."
—Ken Zeichner, Hoefs-Bascom Professor of Teacher Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison