Abstracts - Earli

E 2329 August 2007 14:30 - 16:30Room: 1.58SymposiumStudying teacher educationChair: Christopher Clark, University of Delaware, USAOrganiser: Christopher Clark, University of Delaware, USADiscussant: Michal Zellermayer, Levinsky College of Education, IsraelSymposium Abstract The scientific yield of nearly sixty years of studying teacher education isprofoundly disappointing. Two of the foremost American authorities on teacher educationresearch, Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Kenneth Zeichner, conclude in their 800-page editedvolume entitled “Studying Teacher Education” (2005) that there is no scientific basis forconfidence in the effectiveness of, necessity for, or superiority of any of the many practices anddesign variations of teacher education programs studied in the USA. This symposium challengesthe dark claim by Cochran-Smith and Zeichner and advocates a radical shift in focus of researchon teacher education, turning away from conceptualizing teacher education research as a scientificquest for “one best method” or for the “laws of learning to teach” and toward re-conceptualizingteacher education research as local, formative evaluation aimed at contextualized improvement ofparticular teacher education programs. Symposium papers will argue the case for a paradigm shiftin research on teacher education and provide examples of studies of teacher education in the USA,Canada, and The Netherlands that illustrate what this paradigm shift will look like.Studying teacher educationChristopher Clark, University of Delaware, USAFrances O’C. Rust, New York University, USAChristopher M. Clark of the University of Delaware and Frances O’Connell Rust of New YorkUniversity will open the symposium by offering their assessment, drawn in part from the Clark, etal. (in press) critical review of the book Studying Teacher Education (2005), of the state ofresearch on teacher education in the USA and internationally. Clark and Rust advocate a change indirection of the field, away from the quest to define one best model of teacher education andtoward local formative evaluation and gradual improvement of particular teacher educationprograms. The paper will describe ways in which teacher education program designs in the USAdo and do not reflect established scientific and craft knowledge about effective teacher educationand describe the apparent consequences for teacher education program reputation, success ofteacher graduates, and demands on teacher education faculty.Partnerships as amplifiers of teacher educationBuitink Jaap, University of Groningen, NetherlandsJaap Buitink of the Academic Centre for Teaching and Learning of the University of Groningen,The Netherlands reports on an international comparison of partnerships in teacher education withemphasis on the limitations of current thinking on partnerships. Stressing the perspective of thelearning process of student teachers, Buitink’s research leads to his proposing a new approach tostructuring teacher education and collaboration between schools and institutes for teachereducation. The paper describes how partnerships between teacher education programs and local– 311 –