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In the United States, policy discussions of teacher education in relationship to teacher quality have tended to focus more closely around debates about the nature of teacher preparation and the need for quality teachers to possess advanced degrees or certification. The field is in need of an array of indicators – a set of powerful, well-researched indicators that can be applied to large public universities as well as small regional private colleges, from university-based programs to “alternative” programs and to more “hybrid” programs. These indicators need to be relevant for teacher certification across a variety of age-ranges and developmental stages. In this chapter, we build on a growing conversation about practice in teacher education and efforts on the part of researchers to identify key features of powerful teacher education. We propose that quality teacher education is designed around a clear and shared vision of good teaching; it is coherent in that it links theory with practice and offers opportunities to learn that are aligned with the vision of good teaching; and it offers opportunities to enact teaching. While these features are supported for the most part by growing consensus in the literature (National Research Council, 2010; NCATE, 2010), there is also an emerging empirical base that provides support for the value of these features as well.

Teacher effectiveness and teacher quality have become the focus of intense international attention and national concern. Dozens of nations are implementing a diverse set of strategies that aim to improve the quality of education by improving the quality of teachers. These efforts have not been well coordinated, and as the authors in this volume show, core constructs of quality have not been well defined. In this introductory chapter, we discuss why teachers are now “under the microscope” of policymaker’s attention and elaborate how the chapters in this volume identify particularly fruitful avenues for further study. The assembled chapters address two complex questions: (1) what existing cross-national measures of teacher effectiveness and teacher quality are most promising and how can these be aligned to maximize their research potential? and (2) what core constructs of teacher quality or effectiveness are missing from the evidence-base, and how can cross-national comparative research help refine these? To investigate these questions, the chapters in this volume address different aspects of “quality.” While quality may be politically contested, there is a significant need to continue to articulate a truly global perspective on teacher quality. The authors look at a wide range of aspects of quality in order to advance thinking about teacher education, instructional quality and workforce or organizational conditions that affect quality; to analyze instruments, tools, or measures used to assess quality; and identify what measures need to be developed further. We also note how scholarly study of the spread of transnational teacher reforms has failed to keep pace with national policy changes regarding teacher quality, and advance a more general theory of the forces affecting national policymakers.

This chapter focuses on one particular practice that came to the forefront in over a dozen teacher education sessions with government schoolteachers in southern India- the reflective practice “Dialogic Modeling.” This chapter delves into two primary facets of dialogic modeling: how it operates and how it fosters opportunities to study the practices being modeled. To help supporters’ and critics’ reading, this chapter examines the form of several episodes of dialogic modeling. By form, the author refers to terms such as logic, structure, and conditions. This form and function analytic is critical to recognizing the mechanics of the practice, and provides an understanding of how a reflective dialogic practice can operate. The chapter also takes up why this form matters for how teachers learn to do their work, and how doing the work of teaching can be bolstered through reflective practice. By doing so, the chapter aims to provide additional warrants for the claims that teacher education can, and likely should, involve teacher-learners in the deliberate study of principled practices. Moreover, the author argues that modeling as it is commonly done leaves much to chance and squanders the opportunity to learn and build teachers’ capacities.

This qualitative inquiry reports the ways in which three graduate-level preservice elementary teachers conceived of the relationship between diversity and democracy, and explores how their understandings of this relationship informed their planning for democratic citizenship education with young learners. Findings indicate while the participants exhibited a certain measure of variance in their thinking about diversity and democracy, all of them planned their lessons at a lower level of multicultural support than their views suggested they would. This primarily highlights the ongoing lack of understanding regarding what it might mean to teach democratic citizenship through its practice as well as its study.

The study aims to explore the experiences of new school-based mentors in Norway of an online teacher professional development (OTPD) programme in mentoring. The focus was on how the OTPD programme worked out as a boundary artefact to strengthen the coherence between a university and partner schools.

Constant comparative analysis was used to examine 21 school-based mentors' experiences and how the programme worked out as an artefact to strengthen the coherence between the teacher and education arenas. The findings were interpreted considering the literature and OTPD and boundary-crossing theories.

The findings revealed that the OTPD programme served as a boundary artefact. By participating, the new school-based mentors felt part of a community, identifying as teacher educators. Thus, the programme mediated their understanding of their new role as a teacher educator. Two main tensions were found: first, resistance towards online collaboration with school-based mentors across schools and participants that preferred to work locally with their own colleagues and, second, different technologies at the schools and the university disrupting the participants' experiences. Overall, this study emphasised the value of a facilitator from the university supporting the participants' development in the OTPD programme.

This study provides an understanding of teachers' OTPD when at the boundary of becoming school-based mentors and may contribute to enhancing universities' quality of teacher education. This study also highlights the importance of stronger connections between school-based mentors and their university campuses.