Highlights For Teacher Educators

As a teacher educator, you know that the conditions you create to support teachers with their professional development are critical. In MOVIE 1, Paul Black, a leading figure in UK science education from London's Kings College, describes the ground rules he tries to establish when working with teachers:

(1) Acknowledge up front that he as a teacher educator cannot tell teachers what to do, but can support them in inventing their own new knowledge about how to implement suggested approaches;
(2) Have teachers select themselves one approach from a number of research-supported reforms to explore for a time;
(3) Give teachers adequate time to investigate their selected area with one class before trying to apply the approach more broadly; and
(4) Recognize that teachers often feel they lose control of their classes for a time when doing reform-based work (visit Teacher/Student Control for more on this issue), and provide support during this critical time.

MOVIE 2 has Vanderbilt's Richard Lehrer describing some of the contexts and goals he and others at Vanderbilt establish when working with teachers of various grades in creating contexts for authentic student learning in math and science.