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This introductory chapter provides an explanation for and overview of this edited collection, including a brief synopsis of the themes which are developed in its chapters. Themes include the contested site of teacher preparation, whether it should take place mainly at university or in schools and whether the emphasis should be on the academic discipline of education or on the practical elements of teaching. A second theme relates to the impact of education policy on teacher preparation; in particular, the devolution of powers from the UK Parliament and Government to the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Executive (now Scottish Government). In this devolved context a new curriculum framework covering those aged 3–18 years, called Curriculum for Excellence, was introduced in 2010 and recently a Scottish solution to teacher shortages has been to create online and distance learning routes into teaching. A third recurring theme in the book is the review of all forms of teacher education led by the former Chief Inspector of schools, Graham Donaldson. This review resulted in a seminal report, ‘Teaching Scotland's Future’, and its 50 recommendations included many related to teacher preparation and induction. This collection also shines a light on some hitherto neglected areas of teacher preparation, including the Episcopalian Teacher Training College and the preparation for English Language teachers.

Teacher education reform in the United States has been an ongoing theme over the past 100 years, particularly since A Nation at Risk in the 1980s, when education became increasingly politicized and less of a public good with which the American public did not tinker. These reforms have four different themes: (1) strengthening the clinical component of teacher education, (2) preparing educators with the tools needed for equity and social justice, (3) participating in heightened accountability demands, and (4) expanding alternative certification. This chapter explores these four strands of reform and concludes they are colliding forces in which the country pours time, resources, and energy. Ongoing collisions on the reform landscape produce increasingly negative consequences for teacher education, teacher recruitment, and retention and America's public schools.

A growing body of evidence confirms that good teaching is the most important school-specific factor impacting student achievement and growth. Concerns over teachers’ effectiveness have led to escalating demands for reliable systems that measure teachers’ effectiveness. Such performance systems require a stable and explicit definition of knowledge, skills, actions, and dispositions that comprise the work of teaching. In this chapter, we refer to these as teacher “core competencies” (CCs). Well-defined core competency constructs can anchor investigations of teacher effectiveness for purposes in many different settings, but the field currently lacks a set of common stable descriptors. The descriptors encoded in current standards and assessments are plagued by confusion arising from multiple ideological perspectives, conflicting political views on teacher preparation, and disconnects between stakeholders (e.g., university versus alternative preparation routes).

This chapter presents a study designed to move from descriptive, “input-based” ways to describe teaching to the development and early testing of specific construct descriptors. We begin by distilling many disparate sources of authority regarding what teachers should know and be able to do and assess the validity and usefulness of the resulting descriptors across several measurement applications. We find evidence of stability across multiple populations and different settings and evidence that the constructs can describe preparation program emphases, as well as evidence that some program-level aggregate scores correlate with student assessment scores. We also investigate the stability of competency constructs in different settings, attempting to understand the implications of k-12 school contexts for interpreting core competency measurements of preparation programs.

In this chapter, we provide an overview of the characteristics, content, procedures, processes, and outcomes of effective educator preparation programs for teachers of students with behavioral disorders (BD). We emphasize the need for teachers of students with BD to be fluent with the identification and application of evidence-based practices and discuss how teacher preparation programs best prepare these teachers for the challenges they will face in the classroom. The chapter includes an evaluation checklist for programs preparing educators to teach students with BD; this checklist lists critical competencies, content, and practices (e.g., implementation fidelity, collaboration, classroom management) that should be part of the training for all teachers of students with BD. In addition, we discuss future directions for the field and suggestions for increasing the effectiveness of teacher preparation programs that prepare teachers of students with BD.

Purpose: To describe the importance of exemplary literacy teacher preparation today, the changing landscape of teacher preparation accreditation and the recently revised and launched International Literacy Association (ILA) National Recognition programs.

Design: In this chapter, the authors examine the current context of literacy teacher preparation in the United States, including the changing landscape of national accreditation, national recognition, and certification requirements. Next, the authors provide a brief overview of the ILA Standards for the Preparation of Literacy Professionals 2017 (Standards 2017) (International Literacy Association (ILA), 2018) and consider how Standards 2017 may inform literacy teacher preparation programs, state standards, and certification. Then, the authors discuss how the role of reading/literacy specialist in Standards 2017 is being applied in the ILA National Recognition program. To close the chapter, the authors share guiding questions and two case studies from exemplary literacy preparation programs – West Virginia University and the University of Texas at San Antonio – in an effort to provide practical examples of program innovation and improvement in these challenging times in literacy teacher preparation.

Findings: The authors discuss the current context of teacher preparation today, the ILA Standards 2017 with specific attention to the reading/literacy specialist role and standards.

Practical Implications: ILA National Recognition program involve reflection, self-study, on-site visits by peers to support and inspire ongoing literacy teacher preparation program quality and improvement.

Despite serious debates regarding different methods for preparing special education teachers (e.g., alternative routes, distance education, and programs with traditional student teaching), most supporters of teacher education agree on the importance of professional teaching standards as an underlying framework for defining professionalism in teacher preparation programs. For example, in a national survey of special education alternative route teacher preparation programs, Rosenberg, Boyer, Sindelar, and Misra (2007) found that the majority of respondents indicated their programs were designed around professional teaching standards, particularly standards developed by the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. The CEC, the leading professional organization for special educators, disseminates professional standards for beginning and advanced special educators that have been approved by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) (Council for Exceptional Children, 2004). Specific areas addressed by the CEC professional standards include (1) foundations of special education, (2) development and characteristics of learners, (3) individual learning differences, (4) instructional strategies, (5) learning environments and social interactions, (6) communication, (7) instructional planning, (8) assessment, (9) professional and ethical practice, and (10) collaboration. These standards include the core knowledge and skills essential for effective special educators and serve as guiding principles for professional programs and state licensing departments. They ensure that special educators are well prepared to enter the practice of teaching. Teacher preparation programs should be the vehicle through which professional standards are taught, understood, and translated into practice.

This chapter critically examines the provision and underlying partnership structure of a range of online and distance teacher preparation courses introduced in Scotland from 2014 to 2018. These courses reflect a period of teacher shortages and were developed by Universities in partnership with local authority employers, particularly in rural areas. This chapter explores the geographic and policy context before analysing the national and local policy drivers that led to the expansion of online and distance provision. The structures of a range of programmes introduced by the University of the Highlands and Islands, the University of Aberdeen and the University of Dundee are considered in detail. This is reflected against the national policy drivers of teacher shortages in rural areas, the challenges of recruiting secondary science and technology teachers and the introduction of national funding from the Scottish Government for ‘New Routes into Teaching’. The Government aim of recruiting highly qualified graduates into teaching as a career is contrasted with the local requirement to support a wider more equitable access to a teaching career, for people already committed to living in rural Scotland. This chapter concludes with an analysis of the processes and technology utilised in these programmes before considering the future of online and distance teacher preparation in Scotland.