As long as there have been teachers, there has been an expectation that they be of good character and model virtue. The author describes developments in the thought about teacher dispositions and identifies specific shortcomings in the effort to define and assess them as part of teacher education program accreditation. Virtue ethics as an…

One influential way of thinking about teaching is to conceive of it as a clinical profession, similar in important ways to medicine. However, fundamental differences between doctors' and teachers' practice limit the usefulness of the medical model. How can we adapt our understandings of clinical practice in light of the unique aspects of teaching…

Given widespread acceptance of the role of teaching in improving student outcomes, it is not surprising that policy makers have turned to teaching standards as a lever for educational improvement. There are, however, long-standing critiques of standards that suggest they are reductionist and promote a dualism between theory and practice. Our…

This article uses a phenomenological approach to explore the organizational dynamic of boundary heightening for 27 Black male teachers, across 14 schools, in one urban school district. Black male teachers described being perceived by their colleagues as either incompetent or overqualified to teach their subject matter. These experiences created…

Currently, the inner dynamics of teacher identity transformations remain a "black box." Conceptualizing preservice teacher identity as a complex dynamic system, and the notion of "being someone who teaches" in dialogical terms as involving shifts between different teacher voices, the study investigates the dynamical processes…

Very little is known about the role of person-level qualities, or personality, in the teacher labor market. This study explores the role of "perfectionism" in teacher occupational commitment and retention. One hundred eighteen graduates of a competitive teacher preparation program with widely varying levels of total years commitment to…

The literature on preparing teachers for urban schools provides a rationale for helping candidates understand the particular cultures of students. However, research has not sufficiently "unpacked" features of the setting that programs can address; nor has it discussed how programs tailor teaching approaches to their specific contexts.…

Though teaching yet has its advocates, more and more teachers are leaving the profession after only a few years in the school setting. The satisfactions of this impossibly complex and difficult profession are less and less obvious in this era of accountability and high stakes testing. Indeed, I suggest that the satisfactions often ascribed to the…

This special issue, "Bold Ideas for a New Era in Teacher Education, Teacher Preparation, and Teacher Practice," seeks to examine the impact of bold ideas on our field. Authors were asked to propose particular bold ideas that they wanted to examine. I proposed to examine the concept of bold ideas itself. In this article, I challenge the notion that…

The state of teaching and teacher education is the result of more than a century of compromises and adjustments demanded by the exigencies of another era. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the teaching profession was designed to match the rapid expansion of schooling. It relied on a captive pool of inexpensive, educated female labor…

This letter to the future president of the United States urges her to conduct herself as president as if she were a role model of an educated person and the nation's principal teacher. This obligation entails the need always to be clear about the reasons why her decisions are taken, the evidence or values that support those decisions, the…

In this essay, the author argues for a reconsideration of the teachers college tradition within teacher ed curriculum. The author draws upon history and moral philosophy to make the case that the teaching profession has declined because teacher educators have neglected the philosophical tradition that the author maintains is the key to our future.…

A number of recent studies have shown that teachers are unevenly distributed across schools: compared to other students, students who are low-income, minority, limited-English proficient, low-performing, and/or from urban contexts tend to be taught by substantially less qualified teachers. Consequently, many researchers have analyzed how teachers…

Levine notes that education has declined as a national priority. He appeals to the next U.S. president to champion quality education in America, addressing the achievement gap by focusing on teachers. He urges that the nation dignify the teaching profession, restoring its prestige through the equivalent of a Rhodes Scholarship program for teachers…

Today, American education faces a crisis. It is not too extreme to say that public education hangs in the balance. Anyone who has read the history of American education knows that there have always been critics. But they did not want public education dismantled. They wanted it to be better. Today, however, there are critics who believe that public…