Much of K-12 teaching privileges White, upper-middle-class ways of being, thinking, feeling, and interacting. Integrating arguments from moral philosophy and empirical work on teaching and teacher learning, we (a) conceptualize transformative practice, including its moral rewards; (b) frame teacher dispositional virtues that modify their practice;…

Teacher recruitment is a pressing need in the United States. Equally important is the recruitment of more racial-minority teachers to help close the teacher-student diversity gap. We surveyed 300 undergraduates at our university regarding their perspectives on teaching careers--what they found attractive and deterring. Results from this survey and…

What does it mean to live a teacher's life? What does it mean to be a teacher, to become a teacher, to stay in teaching, or to leave the profession? Why are teachers doing what they are doing the way they are doing it? These questions have fascinated the author throughout his academic career as a researcher as well as in his teaching and his work…

The teaching profession, at its core, is relational. Professional development of teachers is provided in many ways: one day seminars, professional learning communities, mentoring, etc. However, there has been little attention to the interaction between the teachers involved in the process and what influence this interaction has on their…

Teacher motivation long has been a topic of interest to researchers (Ames & Ames, 1984; Sylvia & Hutchison, 1985). It is widely recognized that the motivations residing behind teachers' actions profoundly shape the nature and quality of those actions and their effects on young people. Surprisingly, while often recognized especially by…

In this article, using the context of a secondary literacy course, the author argues that personal experiences, praxis-based reflective opportunities, and pedagogically-minded assessments are important in shaping an emergent professional identity that effectively integrates literate practices with content instruction. This article examines…

This article, which comes out of a research project exploring teaching as intellectual work, focuses specifically on a young woman who worked as a substitute teacher after she graduated from a two-year teacher education program at her local university. For Penny, substitute teaching was an interruption as she shaped a professional life moving…

The teaching performance assessment (TPA) seeks to measure the knowledge, skills, and competencies of teachers during the credential phase of their training. The TPA was introduced in California in 2004 with programs piloting it and then became mandatory for candidates enrolling in preliminary programs in 2008. Although California has multiple…

In 2006, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) made a controversial decision to remove the term "social justice" from its list of desirable teacher dispositions. Arthur Wise, NCATE president at the time, conceded that the term was "susceptible to a variety of definitions" (Johnson & Johnson, 2007) and argued that key…

In this article, the authors present (Lortie's, D. C. (1975) construct of the apprenticeship of observation--what people learn about teaching from having been students in school--as fundamentally conservative. Students, see teachers "front stage and center like an audience viewing a play," thus learning about teaching in a manner that is…

In the spring of 2005, the author began collecting data for a three-year study investigating the effectiveness of preservice preparation as measured by the transfer of pedagogical practices from preservice settings into novice inservice settings. She was interested in whether or not what was being taught, modeled, and/or espoused in a given…

Having been concerned with the recruitment, enrollment, and retention of teachers of color nationally and at State University (all names of persons, places, and institutions in this article have been given pseudonyms) where she serves as chair of elementary education, author Mary Gomez was intrigued by the experiences that students of color were…

The bulk of current research on teacher professional development is focused on teacher learning in the context of teacher professional learning communities (PLCs). In teacher PLCs, groups of teachers meet regularly to increase their own learning and the learning of their students. Teacher PLCs offer a learning model in which, "new ideas and…

The authors believe that many teacher educators are charged with teaching and advising those seeking initial teacher licensure. They must make a concerted effort to have students reflect seriously on the meanings they are constructing of their work. They need to ask them to gauge continually their confidence in their career choice when they are…

Teacher education programs challenge students' beliefs about teaching and learning in hope of creating a pedagogical awareness that will inform teaching practices and guide the professional transformation from student to teacher. The process of becoming a teacher is referred to variously as teacher development, professional growth and development,…