Focusing directly on the development of instructional practice and its effects is not easy. One major shortcoming in the educational infrastructure has been the lack of a common curriculum. A second has been an impoverished approach to supporting teaching practice. These two are related, for any effort to develop and improve teaching is weakened…

In this article, the authors argue for making practice the core of teachers' professional preparation. They set the argument for teaching practice against the contemporary backdrop of a teacher education curriculum that is often centered not on the tasks and activities of teaching but on beliefs and knowledge, on orientations and commitments, and…

Based on data from a longitudinal study of teacher preparation conducted at a large midwestern U.S. university, this article describes and appraises what elementary teacher education students were taught about textbooks, what they learned, and what they did with these lessons during student teaching. (Author/TE)