Constructing 21st Century Tchr Ed

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10.1177/0022487105285962 Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. XX, XXX/XXX 2006 Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. XX, XXX/XXX 2006

CONSTRUCTING 21st-CENTURY TEACHER EDUCATION

Linda Darling-HammondStanford University

Much of what teachers need to know to be successful is invisible to lay observers, leading to the viewthat teaching requires little formalstudy andto frequentdisdain forteacher educationprograms. Theweakness of traditional program modelsthat are collections of largely unrelatedcourses reinforce thislowregard. This article argues that we have learned a greatdeal about howto create stronger, more effective teacher education programs. Three critical components of such programs include tight coher-ence and integration among courses and between coursework and clinical work in schools, extensiveand intensely supervised clinical work integrated with coursework using pedagogies linking theoryand practice, and closer, proactive relationships with schools that serve diverse learners effectivelyand develop and model good teaching. Also, schools of education should resist pressures to waterdown preparation, which ultimately undermine the preparation of entering teachers, the reputationof schools of education, and the strength of the profession.

Keywords: field-based experiences; foundations of education; student teaching; supervision; theo-ries of teacher education

Thepreviousarticles have articulated a spectac-ular array of things that teachers should knowand be able to do in their work. These includeunderstanding many things about how peoplelearn and how to teach effectively, including as-pects of pedagogical content knowledgethat in-corporate language, culture, and communitycontexts for learning. Teachers also need to un-derstand the person, the spirit, of every childand find a way to nurture that spirit. And theyneed the skills to construct and manage class-room activities efficiently, communicate well,use technology, and reflect on their practice tolearn from and improve it continually.

The importance of powerful teaching is

increasingly important in contemporary soci-ety. Standards for learning are now higher thanthey have ever been before, as citizens andworkers need greater knowledge and skill tosurvive and succeed. Education is increasinglyimportantto the success ofboth individuals and

nations, and growing evidence demonstratesthat—among all educational resources—teach-ers’ abilities are especially crucial contributorsto students’ learning. Furthermore, thedemands on teachers are increasing. Teachersneed not only to be able to keep order and pro-vide useful information to students but also to be increasingly effective in enabling a diversegroup of students to learn ever more complexmaterial. In previous decades, they wereexpected to prepare only a small minority forambitious intellectual work, whereas they arenow expected to prepare virtually all studentsfor higher order thinking and performanceskills once reserved to only a few.

Given this variety of teacher education goalsand the realities of 21st-century schooling, thetask for this article is to consider what those of us in the field of teacher education might do tosupport thekinds of learning teachers requiretoundertake this complex job with some hope of

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Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. X, Month 2006 1-15DOI: 10.1177/0022487105285962© 2006 by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education



success. Inrespondingtothis question,I want todraw on the recently released work of theNational Academy of Education Committee onTeacher Education, a group of researchers,teachers, and teacher educators that worked for

4 years to summarize how what we have cometo know about how children and adults learncaninform the curriculum anddesignof teachereducation programs (Darling-Hammond &Bransford, 2005).1

The National Academy of Education Com-mittee’s report begins with this description:

To a music lover watching a concert from the audi-ence, it wouldbe easy to believe that a conductorhasone of the easiest jobs in the world. There he stands,waving his arms in time with the music, and the or-chestra produces glorious sounds, to all appear-ances quite spontaneously. Hidden from theaudience—especially from the musical novice—arethe conductor’s abilities to read and interpret all of thepartsat once, toplay several instrumentsandun-derstand the capacities of many more, to organizeand coordinate the disparate parts, to motivate andcommunicate with all of the orchestra members. Inthe same way that conducting looks like hand-wav-ingto theuninitiated, teachinglookssimplefromtheperspectiveofstudentswhosee a persontalkingandlistening, handing out papers, and giving assign-ments. Invisible in both of these performances arethe many kinds of knowledge, unseen plans, and

backstage moves—the skunkworks, if you will, thatallow a teacher to purposefully move a group of stu-dents from one set of understandings and skills toquite another over the space of many months.

On a daily basis, teachers confront complex deci-sionsthat rely onmanydifferentkindsof knowledgeand judgment and that can involve high-stakes out-comes forstudents’ futures.To makegooddecisions,teachers must be aware of the many ways in whichstudent learning can unfold in the context of devel-opment, learning differences, language and culturalinfluences, and individual temperaments, interests,and approaches to learning. In addition to founda-tional knowledge about these areas of learning andperformance,teachers need to know howto take the

steps necessary to gather additional informationthat will allow them to make more grounded judg-ments about what is going on and what strategiesmay be helpful. Above all, teachers need to keepwhat is best for the child at the center of their deci-sion making. This sounds like a simple point but it isa complex matter that has profoundimplicationsforwhat happens to and for many children in school.(Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005, pp. 1-2)

CONTEMPORARY DILEMMAS FOR

TEACHER EDUCATION

Both the apparent ease of teaching to thenoninitiated and the range of things teachersreally do need to know to be successful with all

students—not just those whocan learn easilyontheir own—are relevant to the dilemmas thatteacher education programs find themselves intoday. On one hand, many lay people and alarge share of policy makers hold the view thatalmost anyone can teach reasonably well—thatentering teaching requires, at most, knowingsomething about a subject, and the rest of thefairly simple “tricks of the trade” can be pickedup on the job.

These notions—which derive both from alack of understanding of what good teachersactually do behind the scenes and from tacitstandards for teaching that are far too low—lead to pressures forbackdoor routes into teach-ing that deny teachers access to much of theknowledge base for teaching and often, to thesupervised clinical practice that would providethem with models ofwhat good teachers do andhow they understand their work. It is tragic thatindividuals who are likely to be seduced intoteaching through pathways that minimize theiraccess to knowledge are those who teach high-

need students in low-income urban and ruralschools where the most sophisticated under-standing of teaching is needed.

On the other hand, the realities of what ittakes to teach in U.S. schools such that all chil-dren truly have an opportunity to learn arenearly overwhelming. In the classrooms most beginning teachers will enter, at least 25% of students live in poverty and many of them lack basic food, shelter, and health care; from 10% to20% have identified learning differences; 15%speak a language other than English as theirpri-

mary language (many more in urban settings);and about 40% are members of racial/ethnic“minority” groups, many of them recent immi-grants from countries with different educa-tional systems and cultural traditions.

Not only is the kind of practice needed toteach students with a wide range of learningneeds an extremely complex, knowledge-intense undertaking—demanding of extraordi-

2 Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. XX, XXX/XXX 2006



nary personal and professional skills—but alsoU.S. schools rarely support this kind of practice.In contrast to schools in high-achieving Euro-pean and Asian countries, American factory-model schools offer fewer opportunities for

teachers to come to know students well duringlong periods of time and much less time forteachers to spend working with one another todevelop curriculum, plan lessons, observe anddiscuss teaching strategies, and assess studentwork in authentic ways. As the National Acad-emy of Education Committee on Teacher Edu-cation observed, “Many analysts have notedthat there is very little relationship between theorganizationof thetypical Americanschool andthe demands of serious teaching and learning”(Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005, p. 4).

Thus, schools of education must design pro-grams that help prospective teachers to under-stand deeply a wide array of things about learn-ing, social and cultural contexts, and teachingand be able to enact these understandings incomplex classrooms serving increasinglydiverse students; in addition, if prospectiveteachers are to succeed at this task, schools of education must design programs that trans-form thekindsofsettings inwhich novices learnto teach and later become teachers. This means

that the enterprise of teacher education mustventure outfurther andfurther from theuniver-sity and engage ever more closely with schoolsin a mutual transformation agenda, with all of the struggle and messiness that implies. It alsomeans that teacher educators must take up thecharge of educating policy makers and the pub-lic about what it actually takes to teach effec-tively in today’s world—both in terms of theknowledge and skills that are needed and interms of the schoolcontextsthat must becreatedto allow teachers to develop and use what they

know on behalf of students (Fullan, 1993).Strides were made on both of these agendas

in the late 1980s when the Holmes Group (1986,1990) issued the first of its reports, the CarnegieForum on Education and the Economy TaskForce on Teaching as a Profession (1986) out-lined a major agenda for professionalizingteaching, and the National Network for Educa-tional Renewal was launched (Goodlad, 1990,

1994). Many important reforms of teacher edu-cation that have since taken place owe much of the impetus to these initiatives. These havestrengthened both the subject matter and peda-gogical preparation teachers receive (and the

content pedagogical preparation that joins thetwo), introduced professional developmentschool (PDS) partnerships that have sometimeschanged the nature of schooling along withtraining for teaching, and created signaturepedagogies andmoreauthentic assessments forteacher education that link theory and practiceand are beginning to change the ways in whichteachers are taught.

However, in recent years, under pressurefrom opponents of teacher education and withincentives for faster, cheaper alternatives (see,

e.g., U.S. Department of Education, 2002),teacher education as an enterprise has probablylaunched more new weak programs thatunderprepare teachers, especially for urbanschools, than it has further developed the stron-germodelsthat demonstrate what intense prep-aration can accomplish. As a result, beginningteacher attrition has continued to increase(National Commission on Teaching and Amer-ica’s Future, 2003), and the teaching force is becoming increasingly bimodal. Although

some teachers are better prepared than theyever were before, a growing number who servethe most vulnerable students enter teaching before they have been prepared to teach and areincreasingly ill prepared for what they mustaccomplish(Darling-Hammond & Sykes, 2003).In addition, teacher educators seem to have losttheir voice in arguing for—and helping toshape—the kinds of schools and education thatwill allow teachers to practice well andchildrento learn and thrive.

Thus, I would argue that teacher educators,

as a professional collective, need to work moreintently to build on what has been learnedabout developing stronger models of teacherpreparation—includingthemuch strongerrela-tionships with schools that press for mutualtransformations of teaching and learning toteach—while resisting the pressures and incen-tives that lead to the creation of weaker modelsthatultimately reinforce dissatisfaction withthe

Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. XX, XXX/XXX 2006 3



outcomes of teacher education and underminethe educational system.

BUILDING STRONG MODELS OF

PREPARATION

Although reform initiatives have triggeredmuch discussion about the structures of teachereducation programs (e.g., 4 year or 5 year,undergraduate or graduate) and the certifica-tion categories into which programs presum-ably fit (e.g., “traditional” or “alternative”),there has been less discussion about what goeson within the black box of the program—insidethe courses and clinical experiences that candi-dates encounter—and about how the experi-ences programs design for candidates cumula-

tively add up to a set of knowledge, skills, anddispositions that determine what teachersactually do in the classroom.

Knowledge for Teaching: The “What” of Teacher Education

There are many ways of configuring theknowledge that teachers may need. In articulat-ing the core concepts and skills that should berepresented in a common curriculum forteacher education, theNational Academy ofEd-ucation Committee on Teacher Educationadopted a framework that is organized on threeintersecting areas of knowledge found in manystatements of standards for teaching (see Figure1):

knowledgeof learners andhowthey learn anddevelopwithin social contexts, including knowledge of lan-guage development;

understandingof curriculumcontentand goals,includ-ing the subject matter and skills to be taught in lightof disciplinary demands, student needs, and the so-cial purposes of education; and

understanding of and skillsfor teaching, includingcon-tent pedagogical knowledge and knowledge forteaching diverse learners, as these are informed byan understanding of assessment and of how to con-struct and manage a productive classroom.

These interactions between learners, content,and teaching are framed by two important con-ditions forpractice:First is the fact that teachingis a profession with certain moral and technical

expectations—especially the expectation thatteachers, working collaboratively, will acquire,use, andcontinue to develop sharedknowledgeon behalf of students. Second is the fact that, intheUnited States, educationmust serve the pur-

poses of a democracy. This latter conditionmeans that teachers assume the purpose of en-ablingyoung peopleto participate fully in polit-ical, civic, and economic life in our society. Italso means that education—including teach-ing—is intended to support equitable access towhat that society has to offer.

The implications of this framework forteacher education are several: First, like thework of other professions, teaching is in the ser-vice of students, which creates the expectationthat teachers will be able to come to understand

how students learn and what various studentsneed if they are to learn more effectively—andthat they will incorporate this into their teach-ing and curriculum construction. Deep under-standing of learning andlearning differences asthebasis of constructingcurriculum hasnot his-torically been a central part of teacher educa-tion. These domains were typically reserved topsychologists and curriculum developers whowere expected to usethis knowledge to developtests and texts, whereas teachers learned teach-ingstrategies to implementcurriculum that was

presumably designed by others. In some ways,this approach to training teachers was ratherlike training doctors in the techniques of sur-gery without giving them a thorough knowl-edge of anatomy and physiology. Withoutknowing deeplyhowpeople learn,andhow dif-ferent people learn differently, teachers lack thefoundation that can help them figure out whatto do when a given technique or text is not effec-tive with all students. And teachers cannotachieve ambitious goals by barreling from onelesson to the next without understanding howto construct a purposeful curriculum. Thisrequires incorporating subject matter goals,knowledge of learning, and an appreciation forchildren’s development and needs. Connectingwhat is to be learned to the learners themselvesrequires curriculum work, even when teachershave access to a range of texts and materials.




Furthermore, the work of teaching, like thatof other professions, is viewed as nonroutineand reciprocally related to learning; that is,what teachers do must be continually evaluatedand reshaped based on whether it advanceslearning, rather than carried out largely by cur-riculum packages, scripts, and pacing sched-ules as many districts currently require. Thismeans that teachers need highlyrefined knowl-edge and skills forassessingpupil learning,andthey need a wide repertoire of practice—along

with the knowledge toknowwhen to use differ-ent strategies for different purposes. Ratherthan being subject to the pendulum swings of polarized teaching policies that rest on simplis-tic ideas of best practice—“whole language”versus“phonics,” forexample, or inquiry learn-ing versus direct instruction—teachers need toknow how and when to use a range of practicesto accomplish their goals with different stu-

dents in different contexts. And given the widerange of learning situations posed by contem-porary students—who represent many distinctlanguage, cultural, and learning approaches—teachers need a much deeper knowledge baseabout teaching for diverse learners than ever before and more highly developed diagnosticabilities to guide their decisions.

Finally, teachers must be able continually tolearn to address the problems of practice theyencounter and to meet the unpredictable learn-

ing needs of all of their students—and theymust take responsibility for contributing whattheylearn tonot onlytheir own practicebut alsothat of their colleagues. This means that pro-grams must help teachers develop the disposi-tion to continue to seek answers to difficultproblemsof teaching andlearning andtheskillsto learn from practice (and from their col-leagues) as well as to learn for practice.


FIGURE 1: A Framework for Understanding Teaching and LearningSOURCE: Darling-Hammond & Bransford (2005, p. 11). PERMISSION IS BEING OBTAINED BY AUTHOR





candidates bring with them from their years asstudents in elementary and secondary schools,the presumed divide between theory and prac-tice, the limited personal and cultural perspec-tives all individuals bring to the task of

teaching, and the difficult process of helpingpeoplelearn to enact their intentions in complexsettings. They help produce novice teacherswho are able, from their first days in the class-room, to practice like many seasoned veterans,productively organizing classrooms that teachchallenging content to very diverse learnerswith levels of skill many teachers never attain.

In addition to the deeper knowledge base Ihave described above, such powerful teachereducation, I believe, rests on certain criticallyimportant pedagogical cornerstones that have

been difficult to attain in many programs sinceteacher education moved from normal schoolsinto universities in the 1950s. I would like tohighlight three of these here because I thinkthey are essential to achieving radically differ-ent outcomes from preparation programs.

Coherence and Integration

The first is a tight coherence and integrationamong courses and between course work andclinical work in schools that challenges tradi-tional program organizations, staffing, and

modes of operation. The extremely strongcoherence extraordinary programs haveachieved creates an almost seamless experienceof learning to teach. In contrast to the many cri-tiques that have highlighted the structural andconceptual fragmentation of traditional under-graduate teacher education programs (see, e.g.,Goodlad, Soder, & Sirotnik, 1990; Howey &Zimpher, 1989; Zeichner & Gore, 1990), coursework in highly successful programs is carefullysequenced based on a strong theory of learningto teach; courses are designed to intersect with

each other, are aggregated into a well-under-stood landscape of learning, and are tightlyinterwoven with the advisement process andstudents’ work in schools. Subject matter learn-ing is brought together with content pedagogythrough courses that treat them together; pro-gram sequences also create cross-course links.Faculty plan together and syllabi are shared

across university divisions as well as withindepartments. Virtually all of the closely interre-lated courses involve applications in class-rooms where observations or student teachingoccur. These classrooms, in turn, are selected

because they model the kind of practice that isdiscussed in courses and advisement. In someparticularly powerful programs, faculty whoteach courses also supervise and advise teachercandidates and sometimes even teach childrenand teachers in placement schools, bringingtogether these disparate program elementsthrough an integration of roles.

In such intensely coherent programs, coreideas arereiterated across courses and the theo-retical frameworks animating courses andassignments are consistent across the program.

These frameworks “explicate, justify, and buildconsensus on such fundamental conceptions asthe role of the teacher, the nature of teaching andlearning, and the mission of the school in thisdemocracy,” enabling “shared faculty leader-ship by underscoring collective roles as well asindividual course responsibilities” (Howey &Zimpher, 1989, p. 242).

Programs that arelargely a collection of unre-lated courses without a common conception of teaching and learning have been foundtobe rel-atively feeble change agents for affecting prac-

tice among new teachers (Zeichner & Gore,1990). Cognitive science affirms that peoplelearnmoreeffectively whenideas arereinforcedand connected both in theory and in practice.Although this seems obvious, creating coher-ence has been difficult in teacher education because of departmental divides, individualis-tic norms, and the hiring of part-time adjunctinstructors in some institutions that have usedteacher education as a “cash cow” rather thanan investment in our nation’s future. Fortu-nately, a number of studies of teacher education

reform document how programs have over-come the centrifugal forces that leave candi-dates on their own to make sense of disparate,unconnected experiences (Howey & Zimpher,1989; Patterson, Michelli, & Pacheco, 1999;Tatto, 1996; Wideen, Mayer-Smith, & Moon,1998).




Extensive, Well-Supervised Clinical ExperienceLinked to Course Work Using Pedagogies ThatLink Theory and Practice

The second critically important feature thatrequires a wrenching change from traditional

models of teacher education is the importanceof extensive and intensely supervised clinicalwork—tightly integrated with course work—that allows candidates to learn from expertpractice in schools that serve diverse students.All of the adjectives in the previous sentencematter: Extensive clinical work, intensive super-vision, expert modeling of practice, and diversestudents are critical to allowing candidates tolearn to practice in practice with students whocall for serious teaching skills (Ball & Cohen,1999). Securing these features will take radical

overhaul of the status quo. Furthermore, to bemost powerful, this work needs to incorporatenewly emerging pedagogies—such as closeanalyses of learning and teaching, case meth-ods, performance assessments, and actionresearch—that link theory and practice in waysthat theorize practice and make formal learningpractical.

One of the perennial dilemmas of teachereducation is how to integrate theoretically based knowledge that has traditionally been

taught in university classrooms with theexperi-ence-based knowledge that has traditionally been located in the practice of teachers and therealities of classrooms and schools. Traditionalversions of teacher education have often hadstudents taking batches of front-loaded coursework in isolationfrom practice and then addinga short dollop of student teaching to the end of the program—often in classrooms that did notmodel the practices that had previously beendescribed in abstraction. By contrast, the mostpowerful programs require students to spend

extensive time in thefield throughout the entireprogram, examining and applying the conceptsand strategies they are simultaneously learningabout in their courses alongside teachers whocan show them how to teach in ways that areresponsive to learners.

Such programs typicallyrequire at least a fullacademic year of student teaching under thedirect supervision of one or more teachers who

model expert practice with students whohave awide range of learning needs, with the candi-date gradually assuming more independentresponsibility for teaching.Thisallows prospec-tive teachers to grow “roots” on their practice,

which is especially important if they are goingto learn to teach in learner-centered ways thatrequire diagnosis, intensive assessment andplanning toadapt to learners’ needs, and a com-plexrepertoireof practices judiciouslyapplied.

Many teacher educators have argued thatnovices who have experience in classrooms aremore prepared to make sense of the ideas thatare addressed in their academic work and thatstudent teachers see and understand both the-ory and practice differently if they are takingcourse work concurrently with fieldwork. A

growing body of research confirms this belief,finding that teachers-in-training who partici-pate in fieldwork with course work are betterable to understand theory, to apply conceptsthey are learning in their course work, and tosupport student learning (Baumgartner,Koerner, & Rust, 2002; Denton, 1982; Henry,1983; Ross, Hughes, & Hill, 1981; Sunal, 1980).

It is not just the availability of classroomexperience that enables teachers to apply whatthey are learning, however. Recent studies of

learning to teach suggest that immersing teach-ers in the materials of practice and working onparticular concepts using these materials can beparticularly powerful for teachers’ learning.Analyzing samples of student work, teachers’plans and assignments, videotapes of teachersand students in action, and cases of teachingand learning can help teachers draw connec-tions between generalized principles and spe-cific instances of teaching and learning (Ball &Co hen , 1999 ; Hammern ess , Darl i ng-Hammond, & Shulman, 2002; Lampert & Ball,

1998).It is worth noting that many professions, in-

cluding law, medicine, psychology, and busi-ness, help candidates bridge the gap betweentheory and practice—and develop skills of re-flection and close analysis—by engaging theminthereading and writing ofcases.Many highlysuccessful teacher education programs requirecandidates to develop case studies on students,




on aspects of schools andteaching,andon fami-liesor communities by observing, interviewing,examining student work, and analyzing datathey have collected. Proponents argue thatcases support both systematic learning from

particular contexts as well as from more gener-alized theory about teaching and learning.Shulman (1996)suggestedthat cases are power-ful tools for professional learning because theyrequire professionals in training to

move up and down, back and forth, between thememorableparticularities of cases andthepowerfulgeneralizations and simplifications of principlesand theories. Principles are powerful but cases arememorable. Only in the continued interaction be-tween principles and cases can practitioners andtheir mentors avoid the inherent limitations of the-ory-without-practice or the equally serious restric-

tions of vivid practice without the mirror of principle. (p. 201)

These benefits of connecting profession-wideknowledge to unique contexts can also begained by the skillful use of tools such as portfo-lios, teachers’ classroom inquiries and research,andanalyses of specific classrooms, teachers, orteaching situations when teacher educatorsprovide thoughtful readings, guidance, andfeedback.

Although it is helpful to experience class-

rooms and analyze the materials and practicesof teaching, it is quiteanother thing to putidealsinto action. Often, the clinical side of teachereducation has been fairly haphazard, depend-ing on the idiosyncrasies of loosely selectedplacements with little guidance about whathappens in them andlittleconnection to univer-sity work. And university work has often been“too theoretical”—meaning abstract and gen-eral—in ways that leave teachers bereft of spe-cific tools to use in the classroom. The theoreti-cally grounded tools teachers need are many,

ranging from knowledge of curriculum materi-als and assessment strategies to techniques fororganizing group work and planning studentinquiries—and teachers need opportunities topractice with these tools systematically(Grossman, Smagorinsky, & Valencia, 1999).

Powerful teacher education programs have aclinical curriculum as well as a didactic curricu-lum. They teach candidates to turn analysis into

action by applying what they are learning incurriculum plans, teaching applications, andother performance assessments that are orga-nized on professional teaching standards.These attempts are especially educative when

they are followed by systematic reflection onstudent learning in relation to teaching andreceive detailed feedback, withopportunities toretry and improve. Furthermore, recentresearch suggests that to be most productive,these opportunities for analysis, application,and reflection should derive from and connectto both the subject matter and the students can-didates teach (Ball & Bass, 2000; Grossman &Stodolsky, 1995; Shulman, 1987). In this way,prospective teachers learnthefine-grained stuff ofpractice inconnection to the practicaltheories

that will allow them to adapt their practice in awell-grounded fashion, innovating andimprovising to meet the specific classroomcontexts they later encounter.

New Relationships With Schools

Finally, these kinds of strategies for connect-ing theory and practice cannot succeed withouta major overhaul of the relationships betweenuniversities and schools that ultimately pro-duce changes in the content of schooling as wellas teacher training. It is impossible to teach peo-

ple how to teach powerfully by asking them toimagine what they have never seen or to sug-gest they “do the opposite” of what they haveobservedin theclassroom. No amountofcoursework can, by itself, counteract the powerfulexperiential lessons that shape what teachersactually do. It is impractical to expect to prepareteachers forschools as they shouldbe if teachersare constrained to learn in settings that typifythe problems of schools as they have been—where isolated teachers provide examples of idiosyncratic, usually atheoretical practice that

rarely exhibits a diagnostic, assessment-ori-ented approach and infrequently offers accessto carefullyselected strategies designed to teacha wide range of learners well.

These settings simply do not exist in largenumbers—and where individual teachers havecreated classroom oases, there have been fewlong-lasting reforms to leverage transforma-tions in whole schools. Some very effectivepart-




nerships, however, have helped to create schoolenvironments for teaching and teacher train-ing—through PDSs, lab schools, and schoolreform networks—that are such strong modelsof practice and collaboration that the environ-

ment itself serves as a learning experience forteachers (Darl ing-Hammond, in press;Trachtman, 1996). In such schools, teachers areimmersed in strong and widely shared culturalnorms and practices and can leverage them forgreater effect through professional studiesofferingresearch, theory, andinformation aboutother practices and models. Such schools alsosupport advances in knowledge by serving assites where practice-based and practice-sensi-tive research can be carried out collaboratively by teachers, teachereducators,and researchers.

In highly developedPDSmodels, curriculumreforms and other improvement initiatives aresupported by the school and often the district;school teams involving both university andschool educators work on such tasks as curricu-lum development, school reform, and actionresearch; university faculty are typicallyinvolved in teaching courses and organizingprofessional development at the school site andmay also be involved in teaching children; andschool-based faculty often teach in the teacher

education program. Most classrooms are sitesfor practica and student teaching placements,and cooperating teachers are trained to becometeacher educators, oftenholding meetings regu-larly to develop their mentoring skills. Candi-dates learn in all parts of the school, not justindividual classrooms; they receive more fre-quent and sustained supervision and feedbackand participate in more collective planning anddecision making among teachers at the school(Abdal-Haqq, 1998, pp. 13-14; Darling-Hammond, 2005; Trachtman, 1996).

Some universities have sought to create PDSrelationships in schools that are working explic-itly on an equity agenda, either in new schoolsdesigned to provide more equitable access tohigh-quality curriculum for diverse learners orin schools where faculty are actively confront-ing issues of tracking, poor teaching, inade-quate or fragmented curriculum, and unre-sponsivesystems (see,e.g., Darling-Hammond,

in press; Guadarrama, Ramsey, & Nath, 2002).In these schools, student teachers or interns areencouraged to participate in all aspects of school functioning, ranging fromspecial educa-tion and support services for students to parent

meetings, home visits, and community out-reach to faculty discussions and projects aimedat ongoing improvement. This kind of partici-pation helps prospective teachers understandthe broader institutional context for teachingand learning and begin to develop the skillsneeded for effective participation in collegialwork concerning school improvementthroughout their careers.

Developing sites where state-of-the-art prac-tice is the norm is a critical element of strongteacher education, and it has been one of most

difficult. Quite often, if novices are to see andemulate high-quality practice, especially inschools serving the neediest students, it is nec-essary not only to seek out individual cooperat-ing teachers but also to develop the quality of the schools so that prospective teachers canlearn productively. Such school development isalso needed to create settings where advancesin knowledge and practice can occur. Seekingdiversity by placing candidates in schools serv-ing low-income students or students of colorthat suffer from the typical shortcomings many

s uc h s ch oo ls f ac e c an a ct ua ll y b ecounterproductive. As Gallego (2001) noted,

Though teacher educationstudentsmaybeplacedinschools with large, culturally diverse student popu-lations, many of these schools . . . do not provide thekind of contact with communities needed to over-come negative attitudes toward culturally differentstudents and their families and communities(Zeichner, 1992). Indeed, without connections be-tweenthe classroom,school,andlocalcommunities,classroom field experiences may work to strengthenpre-service teachers’ stereotypes of children, ratherthan stimulate their examination (Cochran-Smith,

1995; Haverman & Post, 1992), and ultimately com-promise teachers’ effectiveness in the classroom(Zeichner, 1996). (p. 314)

Thus, working to create PDSs that constructstate-of-the art practice in communities wherestudents are typically underserved by schoolshelps transform the eventual teaching pool forsuch schools and students. In this way, PDSs de-




velop school practice as well as the individualpractice of new teacher candidates. Such PDSssimultaneously restructure school programsand teacher education programs, redefiningteaching and learning for all members of the

profession and the school community.Although not all of the more than 1,000school partnerships (Abdal-Haqq, 1998) createdin the name of PDS work have been successful,there is growing evidence of the power of thisapproach. Studies of highly developed PDSssuggest that teachers who graduate from suchprograms feel more knowledgeable and pre-pared to teach and are rated by employers,supervisors, and researchers as better preparedthanother newteachers.Veteran teacherswork-ing in highly developed PDSs describe changes

in their own practice and improvements at theclassroom and school levels as a result of theprofessional development, action research, andmentoring that are part of the PDS. Some stud-ies document gains in student performance tiedto curriculum and teaching interventionsresulting from PDS initiatives (for a summary,see Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005, pp.415-416).

Although research has also demonstratedhow difficult these partnerships are to enact,many schools of education are moving toward

preparing all of their prospective teachers insuch settings both because they can more sys-tematically prepare prospective teachers tolearn to teach in professional learning commu-nities and because such work is a key to chang-ing schools so that they become more produc-tive environments for the learning of allstudents and teachers.

RESISTING PRESSURES TO

WATER DOWN PREPARATION

Although heroic work is going on to trans-form teacher education and a growing numberof powerful programs are being created, morethan 30statescontinue toallowteachers to enterteaching on emergency permits or waivers withlittle or no teacher education at all. In addition,more than 40 states have created alternativepathways to teaching—some of which are high-

quality postbaccalaureate routes and others of which are truncatedprograms that short-circuitessential elements of teacher learning. Manycandidates who enter through emergency oralternative routes do not meet even minimal

standards when they start teaching, andresearchers have found that pressures to getthem certified in states where thousands arehired annually can undermine the quality of preparation they ultimately receive. In somestates, such as California and Texas, unlicensedentrants have numbered in the tens of thou-sands annually, hired to teach to the leastadvantaged students in low-income andminor-ity schools. Even when these candidates arerequired to make some progress toward alicense each year by taking courses for teaching

while they teach, the quality of preparationtheyreceive is undermined (Shields et al., 2001).Institutions that train these emergency hires

cannot offer the kinds of tightly integrated pro-grams described here in which candidatesstudy concepts andimplement them with guid-ance in supported clinical settings. They areforced to offer fragmented courses on nightsand weekends to candidates who may neverhave seen good teaching and who have littlesupport in the schools where they work. Thepart-time instructors who are often hired to

teach these courses are not part of a faculty-wide conversation about preparation, nor dothey have a sense of a coherent program intowhich their efforts might fit.

When these candidates work full-time, col-leges often water down their training to mini-mize readings and homework and focus on sur-vival needs such as classroom discipline ratherthan curriculum and teaching methods. Candi-dates often demand attention to classroommanagement, without realizing that their lackof knowledge of curriculum and instruction

cause many of the classroom difficulties theyface (Shields et al., 2001). When they skip stu-dent teaching, colleges cannot weave goodmodels of teaching into courses that would con-nect theory and practice, and candidates canonly imagine what successful practice mightlook like.




Studies observe that both recruits and em-ployers typically find the outcomes of this kindof training less satisfactory than those of a morecoherent experience that includes supervisedclinical training along with more thoughtfully

organized course work (California State Uni-versity, 2002; Shields et al., 2001),andmany pro-grams that try to train candidates while theyteach have had extremely high attrition rates(Darling-Hammond, 2001). If medical schoolswere asked to develop programs for already-practicing doctors or nurses that would elimi-nate or truncate some courses and skip clinicalrotations and the internship entirely, theywould refuse to do so. However, universitiesparticipate in this kind of training for teachersfor many reasons:

They feel anobligation to help teachers whohavefoundtheir way into the classroom without proper train-ing;

They are required to do so by laws governing state-fundedprograms or encouraged to do so by federal,state, or local incentives to construct alternativepathways that train teachers while they teach;

They believe, like many policy makers, that this is theonly way to meet persistent supply problems, espe-cially in poor urban and rural districts; and

Such recruits are a source of money and may absorb lit-tle in the way of services for the tuition they pay.

In states where large numbers of individuals

enter teaching in this way, most programs arepressured to bend to this mode of entry, gradu-ally eroding the quality of stronger programsthathavebeendeveloped. Programsexperiencepressures to reduce theamount of time devotedto preparing teachers, to admit candidates onemergency licenses who then require a frag-mentedprogram without student teaching,andto short-circuitclinicalrequirements thatwouldallow candidates to learn to practice undersupervision.

The irony is that when institutions arecomplicit in cobbling together weak programs,even when they do so for the most helpful rea-sons—and when they do not speak out againstemergency hiring—the teacher educationenterprise as a whole is blamed for any and allteachers who are ill prepared, including thosewho entered teaching without preparation.

Few realize that rapidly producing poorlyprepared teachers for this system is a major partof the problem rather than a solution. The cur-rent practice is like pouring water into a bucketwith a gaping hole at the bottom. Aside from

true shortage fields such as mathematics andphysical science, the nation actually producesmore newly credentialed teachers each yearthan it hires. Most of the real problems thatappear as shortages have to do with teacher dis-tributionandretention, notproduction. In addi-tion to unequal funding and salary schedulesthat hamper poor urban and rural districts,manydistrictsthathireunderpreparedteachershave cumbersome and dysfunctional hiringsystems or prioritize the hiring of unqualifiedteachers because such teachers cost less than

qualified teachers who have applied (Darling-Hammond & Sykes, 2003).

In these districts, teacher turnover is evenhigher than the already high rate elsewhere.Nationally, about one third of beginning teach-ers leave within5 years,andtheproportionsarehigher forteachers whoenter with less prepara-tion. For example, teachers who receive studentteaching are twice as likely to stay in teachingafter a year, and those who receive the kinds of preparation that include learning theory and

child development are even more likely to stayin teaching (Henke, Chen, & Geis, 2000; Luczak,2004; National Commission on Teaching andAmerica’s Future, 2003). The costs of thisteacher attrition are enormous. One recentstudy estimates that depending on the costmodel used, districts spend between US$8,000and US$48,000 in costs for hiring, placement,induction, separation, andreplacement for each beginning teacher who leaves (Benner, 2000).On a national scale, it is clear that teacher attri-tion costs billions annuallythat could more pro-

ductively be spent on preparing teachers andsupporting them in the classroom.

Anumberofstatesanddistrictshave filledallof their classrooms with qualified teachers bystreamlining hiring, investing in strongerteacher preparation andinduction, andequaliz-ingsalaries (Darling-Hammond & Sykes, 2003).They have ended the practice of hiring unquali-fied teachers by increasing incentives to teach




rather than lowering standards. As Gideonse(1993) has noted in an analysis of teachereducation policy,

As long as school systems are permitted to hire un-der-prepared teachers through the mechanism of

emergency certificates and their equivalent, teacherpreparation institutions and the faculty in them willhave reduced incentives to maintain standards bypreventing the advancement of the marginallyqual-ified to licensure. All the hype in the world aboutraised standards and performance-based licensureis meaningless absent a real incentive working onschool districts to recruit the qualified through salaryandimprovedconditions of practice, ratherthan be-ingallowedtoredefinethe available asqualified.(p.404)

Whereas many countries fully subsidize anextensive program of teacher education for allcandidates, the amount of preparation secured by teachers in the United States is left substan-tially to what they can individually afford andwhat programs are willing and able to offergiven the resources of their respective institu-tions. Although many U.S. institutions are in-tensifying their programs to prepare moreeffective teachers, they lack the systemic policysupports for candidate subsidies and program-matic funding that their counterparts in othercountries enjoy. And in states that have not de-veloped induction supports, programs are con-

tinually called on to increase the production of new recruits who are then squandered whenthey land in an unsupportive system that treatsthem as utterly dispensable.

In every occupation that hasbecome a profes-sion during the 20th century, the strengtheningof preparation was tied to a resolve to end thepractice of allowing untrained individuals topractice. Teaching is currently where medicinewas in 1910, when doctors could be trained inprograms ranging from 3 weeks of training fea-turing memorized lists of symptoms and cures

to Johns Hopkins University graduate school’spreparing doctors in the sciences of medicineand in clinical practice in the newly inventedteaching hospital.

In his introduction to the Flexner Report,Henry Pritchett (Flexner & Pritchett, 1910),president of the Carnegie Foundation for theAdvancement of Teaching, noted that althoughthere was a growing science of medicine, most

doctors did not get access to this knowledge be-cause of the great unevenness in the medicaltraining they received. Pritchett observed that

very seldom, under existing conditions, does a pa-tient receive the best aid which it is possible to give

him in the present state of medicine, . . . [because] avastarmyof men is admittedto the practiceof medi-cine who are untrained in sciences fundamental tothe profession and quite without a sufficient experi-ence with disease. (p. x)

He attributed this problem to the failure of many universities to incorporate advances inmedical education into their curricula.

As in teaching today, there were those whoargued against the professionalization of medi-cine and who felt that medical practice could best be learned by following another doctor

around in a buggy. Medical education wastransformed as the stronger programs Flexner(Flexner & Pritchett, 1910) identified becamethe model incorporated by accrediting bodiesandas all candidates were required to completesuch programs to practice. In a similar manner,improving teaching and teacher education intheUnited States depends on not only strength-ening individual programs but also addressingthe policies needed to strengthen the teachereducation enterprise as a whole.

Although teacher education is only one com-

ponent of what is needed to enablehigh-qualityteaching, it is essential to the success of all theother reforms urged on schools. To advanceknowledge about teaching, to spread goodpractice, and to enhance equity for children,thus, it is essential that teacher educators andpolicy makers seek strong preparation forteachers that is universally available, ratherthan a rare occurrence that is available only to alucky few.

NOTE

1. The National Academy of Education Committee membersincluded JamesBanks,Joan Baratz-Snowden,DavidBerliner, JohnBransford, Marilyn Cochran-Smith, JamesComer, Linda Darling-Hammond, Sharon Derry, Emily Feistritzer, Edmund Gordon,Pamela Grossman, Cris Gutierrez, Frances Degan Horowitz,Evelyn Jenkins-Gunn, Carol Lee, Lucy Matos, Luis Moll, ArturoPacheco, Anna Richert, Kathy Rosebrock, Frances Rust, AlanSchoenfeld, Lorrie Shepard, Lee Shulman, Catherine Snow,Guadalupe Valdes, and Kenneth Zeichner.




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LindaDarling-Hammond is Charles E. DucommunProfessor of Education at Stanford University School of Education. Sheserved as executivedirector of theNationalCommission on Teaching and America’s Future, which

produced the 1996 widely cited blueprint for educationreform, What Matters Most: Teaching for America’sFuture. Her research, teaching, and policy work focus onteaching and teacher education, school restructuring, and

educational equity. Shehasbeen active in thedevelopmentof standards for teaching, having served as a two-termmember of the National Board for Professional TeachingStandards and as chair of the Interstate New Teacher

Assessment and Support Consortium Committee thatdrafted model standards for licensing beginning teachers.She is author of The Right To Learn (Jossey-Bass, 2001),A License to Teach (Jossey-Bass, 1999), and Profes-sionalDevelopmentSchools: Schools forDevelopinga Profession (Teachers College Press, 2005), along withsix other books and more than 200 book chapters, journalarticles, and monographs on education.


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