Teacher educators living in difficult times

Many of our regular readers of this blog are teacher educators. I (Clare) want to bring to your attention a disturbing development in teacher education in the U.S. Lin Goodwin, Vice-President, Division K of AERA sent the following email. These proposed initiatives could have dire consequences for university-based teacher education. This direction of “inspecting” and assessing teacher ed programs is very similar to what is happening in England. The affects on programs, faculty, and student teachers are profound. I do not think this spread of punitive measures is confined to just a few countries. Below is a summary of the proposed initiatives and a link to the full report. Imagine if the $ spent on assessing teacher ed programs was spent on PD for cooperating/associate teachers and teacher educators or used to create induction programs for new teacher educators or allotted to schools so that cooperating/associate teachers and their student…