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Teacher education has long been criticized for having little apparent impact on practice. Despite the fact that the teacher education literature is replete with examples of alternative or restructured programs designed to better align teacher education practices with the anticipated demands and expectations of school teaching, principles of practice seem strangely absent. Principles of practice for teacher education programs must be at the heart of any attempt to construct a meaningful and relevant program that might realistically respond to the expectations, needs, and practices of student teachers. In this chapter, the authors develop a set of foundational principles based on teacher education programs in Australia, Canada, and the Netherlands, in order to initiate a renaissance of teacher education based on fundamental principles to guide the development of responsive teacher education programs that genuinely make a difference.

This chapter traces the development of teacher knowledge in the field of education from the 1970s onward. It pays attention to the conceptualizations of personal knowledge and personal practical knowledge and relates pedagogical content knowledge to the aforementioned concepts. It then moves on to the more expansive topic of teacher learning in community paying particular attention to dialogical and relational ways of knowing. The work covers intellectual ground that has been traveled and signals new areas where research is likely to be conducted.

This chapter examines the problem of teacher education as it unfolds in the Indian context. It focuses on the historical and cultural context in which teachers’ attitudes and identities develop. Attention is particularly paid to contextual factors that frame teachers’ actions beyond individual intentions. Possibilities for breaking these frames and engaging in new alternatives for action are imagined. An historical approach is employed to understand teachers’ current pedagogical beliefs and action, and its future orientation.

A review of publications in teaching and teacher education over 10 years (2000–2010) on teacher professional development is the subject of this chapter. The first part synthesises production referred to learning, facilitation and collaboration, factors influencing professional development, effectiveness of professional development and issues around the themes. The second part selects from the production nine articles for closer examination. The chapter concludes by noting how the production brings out the complexities of teacher professional learning and how research and development have taken cognizance of these factors and provided food for optimism about their effects, although not yet about their sustainability in time.

The person of the teacher is an essential element in what constitutes professional teaching and therefore needs careful conceptualisation. In this chapter the author argues for this central thesis, presenting a wrap up of his theoretical and empirical work on the issue over the past decade. These studies have been inspired – both conceptually and methodologically – by teacher thinking-research as well as the narrative-biographical approach to teaching and teacher development. The result is an empirically grounded conceptual framework on teacher development and teacher professionalism. Central concepts are ‘professional self-understanding’ and ‘subjective educational theory’ as components of the personal interpretative framework every individual teacher develops throughout his/her career. This personal framework results from the reflective and meaningful interactions between the individual teacher and the social, cultural and structural working conditions constituting his/her job context(s). As such the framework is the dynamic outcome of an ongoing process of professional learning (development). Furthermore, it is argued that the particular professionalism or scholarship of teachers is fundamentally characterised by personal commitment and vulnerability, which eventually have consequences for the kind of reflective attitudes and skills professional teachers should master.

In this chapter, Cheryl Craig and Lily Orland-Barak, editors of International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part A), expound on the traveling pedagogies theme as well as the theory–practice chasm, and conclude the edited volume with a model capturing the nature of fruitful, contextualized international pedagogies. Throughout the discussion, they highlight connections between and among potentially promising pedagogical approaches documented by the contributing authors whose countries of origins differ. As authors of this chapter and editors of this book, they claim that promising pedagogies have the potential to “travel” to other locales if their conditions of enactment are locally grounded, deliberated, and elaborated. This contextualization adds to the fluidity of knowledge mobilization to contexts different from the original one. Furthermore, all of the pedagogies have a praxical character to them, which means they strive to achieve a dialectical relationship between theory and practice. At the same time, they address local complexities in a reflective, deliberative, and evidence-based manner while acknowledging connections/contradictions in discourses and daunting policy issues/constraints/agendas. Against this “messy” backdrop, a model for traveling international pedagogies is proposed. The model balances a plethora of complexities, on the one hand, with the seemingly universal demand for uniformity, on the other hand. Through ongoing local, national, and international deliberation and negotiation, quality international pedagogies of potential use and value become readied for “travel”.

There are two central questions determining the pedagogy of teacher education: (a) What are the essential qualities of a good teacher; and (b) How can we help people to become good teachers? Our objective is not to present a definitive answer to these questions, but to discuss an umbrella model of levels of change that could serve as a framework for reflection and development. The model highlights relatively new areas of research, viz., teachers’ professional identity and mission. Appropriate teacher education interventions at the different levels of change are discussed, as well as implications for new directions in teacher education.

Teacher education for the elementary level in Brazil is examined and the main problems school teachers and teacher educators face are discussed. Some current educational policies in Brazilian education are described and analysed.

Over time, the orientation of educational leadership has changed as new paradigms have been introduced. These new paradigms have afforded increased insights into school milieus and actions and nonactions of teachers. The view of leadership that is currently in vogue connects acts of leading with acts of learning. According to this worldview, transformation occurs when students, teachers, and systems of education learn from experience in mutually beneficial ways. Strictly speaking, teachers are the true leaders of learning. As for school leaders, they facilitate student and teacher growth and take a reflective stance to issues at hand. In this scenario, school leaders as agents of change extend the reach of leading into the realm of leadership and learning.

The Chinese system of education is shifting from an examination orientation to a more creative approach in order to increase educational quality. The New Curriculum in China requires not only changes in content and form, but also sets higher expectations for teachers’ instructional strategies and quality course design. Against this policy backdrop, China developed and implemented the School-Based Instructional Research (SBIR) model to improve teachers’ professional knowledge and development. In this ISATT anniversary chapter, our discussion revolves around the theme of SBIR, including its origin, progression, process, elements, and methods. To end, we summarize the expectations and prospects for SBIR in the Chinese educational context.