The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2002), introduced nearly 10 years ago, called for scientifically based and evidence-based practices. This 2001 legislation has led to subsequent changes in federal funding policies that encourage the use of a more quantitative approach to measuring cause-and-effect relationships between educational conditions and outcomes to produce generalized findings that can inform policy decision making (Feuer, Towne, & Shavelson, 2002). Consequently, these government policies have spawned debates over what constitutes quality educational research and what direction the development of future educational research should take. (1) In this editorial, we examine the questions of What is quality research? and How can we judge it? by referencing research in teaching and education. We review briefly the landscape and characteristics of research in education. Then, using the National Research Council's (NRC; 2002) guidelines as a framework, we offer ideas about what constitutes quality research in education. Lastly, drawing on our experience reviewing 702 manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) during our inaugural year as editors, we discuss some of the standards that we believe are important for judging the quality of research in education. In doing this, we hope to stimulate discussions about how reviewers and editors evaluate research and how the reporting of research in education can be improved. Traditions of Research in Teaching and Teacher Education During the short history of educational research, two competing approaches to inquiry into teaching and education have emerged. Each importantly, yet differently, shapes the identity of educators as researchers and their relationships with the outside world. During the 1960s and 1970s, teaching and education research methods were heavily influenced and shaped by behavioral and social measurement in psychology (Zeichner, 1999). Much of the education research on process-product and teacher effectiveness in the 1980s likewise derived from behavioral psychology in that it focused on how the behavior of teachers affected student performance and learning (Beattie, 1995; McDonald & Elias, 1976). These earlier research studies commonly assumed that causality was linear and unidirectional: the behavior of the affected the behavior of students, which in turn affected student achievement (e.g., Doyle, 1977; Dunkin & Biddle, 1974; Shulman, 1986; Zeichner, 1999). As the field evolved, the unidirectional conception of causality from behavior to observed student behavior was modified to a bi-directional relationship (Brophy & Good, 1986). Nevertheless, the research designs that dominated this era were primarily quantitative and focused on establishing and testing theoretical assumptions about behavior that could be generalized to various contexts of teaching. Research on how education influenced learning received relatively little attention prior to the 1990s (Zeichner, 1999). The behavioral approach that guided research on teaching and education ultimately had several important effects on research-active educators' identity in academia and their political relationships outside of academe. First, it aligned educators with scientists in academia where the status, prestige, and rewards of its members are determined by how hard the knowledge is that they produce (Labaree, 1998). Second, it pushed educators to be professionals, like those in medicine, who produced and used specialized, shared knowledge that consumers of education relied on to make judgments about the quality of services they received (Sykes & Bird, 1992). Third, it positioned educators closer to the powerful policy world in supplying reliable and verifiable information for furthering policy makers' agendas (Cochran-Smith, 2001; Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2005). …
The Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) has a long, distinguished record of publishing articles focusing on multiple aspects of to teach for social justice, social change, and social responsibility (Coehran-Smith, 2001, p. 3). Since the most recent themed issue on the topic, Culture, Diversity, and Transformation, appeared in 2004, the time seemed fight for an update. Furthermore, the current issue devoted to the topic of social justice and teacher education emerged from the field, as we assumed editorship of JTE and noticed that we were receiving a number of quality manuscripts connected by this theme. With this editorial and themed issue, we bring together and highlight current research and scholarship that focus on various practices and conceptions of learning to teach for social justice. We use social justice as an umbrella term to cover projects that differ in their focus (e.g., culturally relevant pedagogy, antiracist pedagogy, intercultural teaching) but share the common aim of preparing teachers to recognize, name, and combat inequity in schools and society. In fall 2009, as we were immersed in the process of working with authors, editing manuscripts, and conceptualizing the editorial for this issue, Mary Travers, the passionate, female vocalist of the folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary, passed away. Her death saddened members of our editorial team, as it undoubtedly saddened many teacher educators of a certain age both in this country and beyond its borders, who grew up to the music of Peter, Paul, and Mary and developed their social consciousness to the tunes that became anthems of the civil rights and antiwar movements. (1) Memories of those songs sparked the idea for organizing this piece. The lyrics of If I Had a Hammer, written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays but spread all over this land by Peter, Paul, and Mary, seemed both appropriate and timely for framing an editorial on the status of social justice in teacher education as represented by the articles in this issue. (2) Seeger and Hays wrote If I Had a in 1949 with the labor rights movement in mind, using three symbols associated with the workplace of the time: the hammer, the bell, and the song. The lyrics reminded workers that they already had in their hands the means to bring about equality. The hammer, the characteristic tool of the laborer, could be transformed into the hammer of justice. The bell that marked the beginning and ending of the workday could become the bell of freedom. The songs that men, women, and children have historically sung to ease the drudgery of hard labor could become songs about love and caring for one another. In this editorial, we apply the metaphorical tools of hammer, bell, and song to the topic of learning to teach for social justice. We interpret the hammer as the tools (theories, ideologies, epistemologies, and practices) we have for learning and teaching about social justice. We see the bell as the means of sending a clear and persuasive message to educators and teacher educators about the relevance of teaching for social justice. We understand the song as the means to unite those who may agree on the goals of teaching for social justice but may disagree on how to go about achieving them, as well as to convince those who may not support those goals that we must work together to create a just, democratic society. We argue that the hammer, the bell, and the song must be used in concert and in balance if we are to advance an agenda for learning to teach for social justice. The Hammer of Justice A hammer is a hand tool used to deliver a blow or make an impact. While most often used to build or construct, it can also be used to break down, deconstruct, or destroy. In teaching and teacher education, the hammer represents the theories, ideologies, epistemologies, and practices used to fight against social injustice. Teacher educators have a number of hammers at their disposal. …
AbstractThis article examines 14 teacher educators’ development of standards-based electronic portfolios. The research focused on the participants' interpretation of the standards and how they conceptualized the portfolio development process in relation to their professional practice. For one year, participants interacted around the Association of Teacher Educator (ATE) standards and the development of their electronic portfolios. Findings illustrated that these teacher educators developed their porfolios in individual ways within a community of practice. Yet, they differed in how they viewed the structure of the process. The process of creating the electronic portfolio encouraged reflection on the standards and on how they think about having their students create portfolios.
This article examines 14 teacher educators’ development of standards-based electronic portfolios. The research focused on the participants’ interpretation of the standards and how they conceptualized the portfolio development process in relation to their professional practice. For one year, participants interacted around the Association of Teacher Educator (ATE) standards and the development of their electronic portfolios. Findings illustrated that these teacher educators developed their portfolios in individual ways within a community of practice. Yet, they differed in how they viewed the structure of the process. The process of creating the electronic portfolio encouraged reflection on the standards and on how they think about having their students create portfolios.
The growth of a global economy, which has spurred fierce competition among many nations hoping to make economic advances, is changing social, political, and economic landscapes as well as the educational systems within these nations (Stromquist & Monkman, 2000). In the United States, these changes exert continual pressures to alter the ways in which public schools prepare their citizenry for work (Burbules & Torres, 2000) and the characteristics of classrooms where these preparations are actualized (Garcia, Arias, Murri, & Serna, 2010). Consequently, changes in school functions and classroom characteristics are engendering changes in teaching and teacher education so that the United States can contend with the challenges emerging from globalization (Darling-Hammond & Cobb, 1996). The research community can help policy makers make informed decisions related to globalization, teaching, and teacher education. First, it is important to describe the realities of globalization and its impacts on schools, teachers, and teacher education to help policy makers and practitioners develop a deep understanding about them. Second, it is critical to conceptualize the issues and problems emerging from these realities and to develop theoretical assumptions that are useful to policy makers and to practitioners for developing and implementing effective teaching practices. Third, it is necessary to verify empirically these concepts and assumptions so that potentially detrimental consequences of policy decisions and practices may be mitigated. Over the years, two competing perspectives have surfaced that conceptualize the realities of globalization and the relevant problems for education. Each proposes different solutions to these problems (Torres, 2002). Each offers strong yet differing implications for changing teaching and teacher education, and each faces challenges from increasingly diverse classrooms that stem, in part, from the global economy. By exploiting various resources, attracting cheap labor, and exploring potential markets throughout the world, the global economy contributes to increased migrations from poor to rich areas, from rural areas to cities, and from developing countries to those that are developed (Garcia et al., 2010). These migrations create and intensify culturally, racially, and socioeconomically diversified student populations in many countries, which further complicates the responsibility of school systems to prepare their students for or against globalization, especially in the United States (Banks, 2008). The first is an economic imperative perspective (Zhao, 2010). Proponents of this perspective assume generally that a nation's competitive edge in the global economy resides in its capacity to develop innovative products that can appeal to a wide range of consumers; find effective ways to locate, distribute, and use resources; and offer relevant efficient services for such production and marketing worldwide (Spring, 1998). To compete in a global arena, a nation needs its workforce to develop new ideas and solve problems successfully, collaborate and communicate with other people effectively, and adapt and function flexibly in different contexts and environments (Stromquist, 2002). Central to this mission is the need to develop certain types of specialized knowledge, skills, and values within its workforce. These include science, mathematics, and technological literacy; multilingual oral, reading, and communication competence; and willingness and ability to understand different cultures and use such understandings to work with different individuals (Longview Foundation, 2008). From this perspective, one of the primary responsibilities of teachers is to equip a nation's future workforce with these qualities. However, teachers are seen frequently as ill prepared to meet this responsibility (Tatto, 2007). As a consequence, ambitious curriculum and teaching standards, accountability and assessment systems, and professional development programs are being established and implemented to transform teaching practices to accommodate to standardization in production and business processes (Merryfield, 1997; Yatto, 2006). …
Educators, scholars, and policy makers agree that quality research is needed to improve teaching and teacher education (Boote & Beile, 2005; Grossman, 2008; Levine, 2007; Young, 2008). This is especially true in the current climate of increasing pressures to produce research that can guide policy making in an age of standards-based reform and teacher accountability. As pressures to enhance student achievement and teaching practice mount, so too does the demand for better and more rigorous empirical educational research that can inform policies and practice. Critical to this improvement is the preparation and training of educational researchers in doctoral programs. It is often presumed that teacher educators who have completed doctoral programs possess the knowledge and skills to conduct research that can contribute to the knowledge base of teaching and teacher education. It is also expected that the academic work produced by these teacher educators be useful in informing teaching practice, teacher education, and policies. However, much has been written about the lack of rigor and weaknesses in work produced by educational researchers in general and teacher educators in particular. Questions about the value of some contributions to the collective knowledge about teaching and teacher education have been raised (Grossman, 2004, 2008; Lagemann, 2000; Levine, 2007; Lin, Wang, Klecka, Odell, & Spalding, 2010; Mitchell & Haro, 1999; Wilson, 2006; Wilson & Tamir, 2008; Zeichner, 2005). Differences in traditions, purposes, design, and foci among different doctoral programs engendered, in part, by the lack of consensus about standards of good research and complicated by the multiple disciplinary traditions within the field of educational research (Levine, 2007; Metz, 2001) as well as the lack of distinction between PhD and EdD degrees (Shulman, Golde, Bueschel, & Garabedian, 2006) have not helped matters. Although recently some discourse has occurred around improving the preparation of educational researchers in doctoral programs (Labaree, 2003; Levine, 2007; Neumann, Pallas, & Peterson, 2008; Pallas, 2001, Schoenfeld, 1999; Wilson, 2006; Young, 2001; Zeichner, 2005), research about teacher educators and their research preparation in doctoral programs is understudied and in its infancy. (1) Much is still unknown about the links between teacher education programs and subsequent teacher performance and student achievement. A similar gap exists between researcher preparation and the subsequent quality of educational researchers. There is much to be learned about how best to prepare teacher educators in the midst of enduring charges of low-quality research and increasing demands for research that can inform policy and practice. The principal aim of this editorial is to provoke thought and dialogue about how to prepare better teacher educator-researchers in research-focused doctoral programs and propose possible research areas that may be useful to strengthening or rethinking their preparation. Although we recognize that being prepared to be a good teacher educator-researcher in academe encompasses more than simply being prepared to conduct high-quality educational research, such as learning to be a strong teacher and mentor (Chauvot, 2009), we focus our discussion on the research preparation component in doctoral programs to stimulate deeper thought about better practices for preparing and training teacher educator-researchers. We frame our discussion around three questions: What should be learned about research? How should candidates learn to do research? How can learning about and doing research be sustained beyond doctoral programs? What Should Be Learned About Research? Learning about research encompasses many aspects. It is expected generally that in doctoral programs, aspiring educational researchers learn to understand the complexity of research issues from multiple disciplinary traditions of theory and method and situate their work so that it contributes to the collective understanding of the field (Boote & Beile, 2005; Metz, 2001; Golde, 2007; Shulman, 2003; Towne, Wise & Winters, 2005). …
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