Enlightening and Empowering Teacher Education Policies and Practices in and beyond the Pandemic: Global and Comparative Perspectives, 2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Establishing enlightening and empowering teacher education policies and practices is no doubt a challenging yet crucial task. There have been more requests for quality teacher education in the face of global calls for 21st century educational reforms amid the worldwide conundrum of teacher shortage challenges in the market-based, neoliberal educational landscapes of high-stakes accountability and prescribed curricular teaching (Carver-Thomas and Darling-Hammond, 2019; Williams III, Hill-Jackson, Caldwell, and Craig, 2022; Zimmerman, 2018). The complexity and multidimensionality of teacher education has become more apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic (Flores, 2021). Various scholars have highlighted the roles of teacher education for the purposes of (effectively) training teachers to cope with both cognitive and emotional challenges during the pandemic and beyond (e.g., catering to learner diversity, technology integration in teaching practice, managing complaints from parents, etc.) (Allen, Rowan, and Singh, 2020; Darling-Hammond and Hyler, 2020; Donitsa-Schmidt and Ramot, 2020; Flores, 2021; Heineke and Vera, 2022; Hill, Rosehart, St. Helene, and Sadhra, 2020). In such demanding, diverse, and dynamic contexts over the past two years, both policies and practices in teacher education (preservice, induction, and in-service) have played significantly important roles in preparing, supporting, and transforming teachers to carry out teaching responsibilities and emerging tasks effectively (Darling-Hammond, 2020; Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin, 2011; Goldhaber, 2019), with the literature growing in this regard. This current Special Issue thus aims to provide a platform for international scholars to share their works related to teacher education and, therefore, draw implications for policy formulations and the feasibility of practices in teacher education around the world.

The aim of this Special Issue is to contribute to the current literature by highlighting the “key learnings” in teacher education policies and practices for preparing teachers during the pandemic, with the following outlined objectives:

• To provide an extensive, comprehensive collection of international scholar perspectives and works in the field of teacher education;
• To reflect on the ways teacher education has responded to the increasing needs in the “new normal” contexts of learning and teaching;
• To reconsider what works (and does not work) to prepare teachers;
• To rethink how teacher education can be strengthened and sustained to face novel challenges more strategically;
• To reconstruct novel knowledge based on (good) practices in the development of teacher training.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

• National, institutional, and pedagogical responses to the pandemic in teacher education policies;
• Novel learning and teaching approaches for teacher education (preservice, induction, and in-service);
• Innovations directed at teacher preparation and professional learning;
• Learning–teaching scenarios in teacher education during the COVID-19 pandemic: challenges and opportunities;
• The roles and preparedness of teacher educators/teacher education institutions to support teacher professional development during the pandemic;
• Transition from teacher education institutions to workplaces in schools.

References

Allen, J., Rowan, L., and Singh, P. (2020). Teaching and teacher education in the time of COVID-19. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 48(3), 233-236.

Carver-Thomas, D., and Darling-Hammond, L. (2019). The trouble with teacher turnover: How teacher attrition affects students and schools. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 27(36). Retrieved from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1213629.pdf 

Cochran-Smith, M., Stringer Keefe, E., and Carney, M. C. (2018). Teacher educators as reformers: Competing agendas. European Journal of Teacher Education, 41(5), 572-590.

Darling-Hammond, L. (2020). Accountability in teacher education. Action in teacher Education, 42(1), 60-71.

Darling-Hammond, L., and Hyler, M. E. (2020). Preparing educators for the time of COVID… and beyond. European Journal of Teacher Education, 43(4), 457-465.

Darling-Hammond, L., and McLaughlin, M. W. (2011). Policies that support professional development in an era of reform. Phi Delta Kappan, 92(6), 81-92.

Donitsa-Schmidt, S., and Ramot, R. (2020). Opportunities and challenges: teacher education in Israel in the Covid-19 pandemic. Journal of Education for Teaching, 46(4), 586-595.

Flores, M. A. (2021). Editorial. The multidimensionality of teacher professional learning: context, content and change. European Journal of Teacher Education, 44(4), 429-431.

Goldhaber, D. (2019). Evidence-based teacher preparation: Policy context and what we know. Journal of Teacher Education, 70(2), 90-101.

Heineke, A. J., and Vera, E. M. (2022). Beyond language and academics: Investigating teachers’ preparation to promote the social-emotional well-being of emergent bilingual learners. Journal of Teacher Education, 73(2), 145-158.

Hill, C., Rosehart, P., St. Helene, J., and Sadhra, S. (2020). What kind of educator does the world need today? Reimagining teacher education in post-pandemic Canada. Journal of Education for Teaching, 46(4), 565-575.

Williams III, J. A., Hill-Jackson, V., Caldwell, C., and Craig, C. J. (2022). Teacher Recruitment and Retention: Local Strategies, Global Inspiration. Journal of Teacher Education, 73(4), 333-337.

Zimmerman, A. S. (2018). Democratic teacher education: Preserving public education as a public good in an era of neoliberalism. The Educational Forum, 82(3), 351-368. 

Dr. Sally Wai-yan Wan
Dr. Maria Antonietta Impedovo
Guest Editors

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• teacher education
• teacher professional development
• initial teacher education
• prospective teachers
• in-service teachers
• pedagogy
• policy development
• sustainable development
• alternative programs
• COVID-19 pandemic

• Enlightening and Empowering Teacher Education Policies and Practices in and beyond the Pandemic: Global and Comparative Perspectives in Education Sciences (14 articles)