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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 consists of two reflective accounts from Slovenia. Both accounts are connected with Barica Marentič Požarnik, who in Part I of this 30th anniversary volume directly linked her personal professional development to the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT) during its emergent years as an organisation. In this chapter in the fifth and closing section, Marentič Požarnik’s counterparts follow in the footsteps that their senior colleague and mentor planted and make tracks of their own. They crystallise how ISATT has affected their professional development and influenced their lines of research as they - and ISATT - press towards the future.

In this chapter, two reforms in initial teacher education at the University of Oslo are contrasted and compared with regard to the use of digital technology and the underlying ideas of teaching and learning. Reflecting different time periods of technology development, these reforms initiated in 2000 and 2012, respectively, offer valuable insights into how initial teacher education is influenced by technologies in the society and how conceptions of teacher professional learning are changing over time. This study highlights the constraints and affordances of the technologies for changing and bridging practices in teacher education. For the uptake and use of digital technology, the findings point to the necessity of critically examining the way in which the approaches to teaching and learning in initial teacher education and the constraints of how the technology designs are influencing student teachers’ learning.